


This story's going somewhere

by jamjar



Category: Bandom, Fall Out Boy (RPS)
Genre: F/M, M/M, ageswap, ageswitch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-13
Updated: 2013-02-13
Packaged: 2017-11-29 04:59:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 42,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/683068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jamjar/pseuds/jamjar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ageswap AU, in which Pete is still young enough that people are hopeful he will one day act his age, Joe is under no such illusion, and Patrick and Andy are old enough to know better (but young enough to do it anyway).</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [](http://ficbyzee.livejournal.com/profile)[**ficbyzee**](http://ficbyzee.livejournal.com/) for encouragement, not telling me I was a crazy person and listening to me flail about how it was only meant to be a small, gratuitous fic. Also, [](http://gigantic.livejournal.com/profile)[**gigantic**](http://gigantic.livejournal.com/) for beta-reading through the lot and reassurance when I was way past any kind of judgement on the fic. And [](http://megolas.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://megolas.livejournal.com/)**megolas** , for letting me talk about this in public. Reposted from ;j in a fit of enthusiasm caused by the new FOB album. 
> 
>  
> 
> Warnings: Adult content. Sex and swearing. Teenage dramatics. Non-gen. Occasionally gratuitous use of people from other bands. Length.

1/5

Joe finds him after French class, excited but trying not to show it.

"So I met this guy," he says, dragging Pete over to the lockers.

"You did? I'm shocked. Not totally shocked, but-- hey, and you know I'm very supportive of your lifestyle, but does Karen know? Or is it Katie. Or Lillian--"

"Yeah, you can shut up," Joe says. "No, I was in Borders, talking about music and this guy kind of interrupts and says, hey, you like them too? His name's Patrick and he's in a band," he says, sounding like he thinks Pete should be impressed.

"So are we," Pete says, slamming his locker shut.

"No, like a real band, that actually gets paid. Money."

Pete raises an eyebrow. "That's the root of all evil, you know? Since you started working, it's like I hardly know you anymore. Capitalist lacky--" He dodges Joe's attempt at smacking him upside the head and grins.

"Fuck you, I need a new amp. So yeah, he's like, a professional musician, and he just started talking to me, like I was--"

"How old is he?" Pete interrupts. "Because if he's some skeevy old guy picking up impressionable young high school boys in book stores…" He shakes his head. "You need to leave that kind of guy to me."

Joe rolls his eyes and says, "Yeah, not your type. He seems sane for a start."

"And yet, he's trying to pick up jailbait groupies in Borders."

"It's not like that," Joe says, and he sounds sincerely frustrated, so Pete stops and looks at him. "He's really-- he seems like a nice guy, and he wasn't trying to pick me up, just talking to me about music. And he said he could put us on the list for Little Bits of Death. He covered for the drummer when he sprained his wrist."

It still sounds pretty sketchy to Pete, but he's been trying to see Little Bits of Death for a while, and at least if he's there, he can stop Joe running off and ending up in some strange guy's basement.

They get there and the band's rocking. No problem getting in --Joe's dirty old man got them on the list and the bouncer didn't check ID. Pete heads to the front of the stage with Joe and they go wild, music coming up from the ground and through his bones. Part of him notes that the sound is off -- vocals too loud, drums too quiet-- but most of him is just going crazy, no thought, only movement.

The bass player catches his eye, gives him a little look and Pete looks back holding it. The guy's hot, shirt off, nice tats winding round his body, and he gets to his knees for the next verse, looking at Pete while he does.

And yeah, that'd be a nice way to end the show, so he licks his lips, makes sure the guy can see, before heading back to the crowd and disappearing in the movement.

He feels someone grab the back of his jeans and he turns around, angry, but it's just Joe mouthing something Pete can't hear over the music. He pulls Pete out of the crowd and over to the bar. He pushes Pete in front of a guy with no shirt and killer sleeves and another guy with glasses and a hat, drinking something orange and keeps Pete there, his hands on Pete's shoulders.

"Pete, this is Patrick and Andy," he says, pointing at hat guy first, then tattoos.

And not what he expected, especially when Patrick nods at him and makes this movement, like he's going to wave hello or shake Pete's hand or something. "Hey, Pete. You liked the show?" He's wearing jeans, but just ordinary ones, not tight enough to let you see or loose enough to get your hands in and a T-shirt that could be grey or blue or green in the club lights.

"Liked the bassist," Pete says, putting a little extra bite in to it. Joe snorts behind him, but Patrick just says, "Robbie? Yeah, he's good."

Pete leans against the bar and watches them and-- okay, so he's not exactly inexperienced with bands, with the music scene. He's been in one off and on for *years*, and he's known enough people in them that he's not automatically going to turn into some groupie just because someone can play three chords without checking the instruction book. First impressions say that Andy probably is cool off-stage, but Patrick isn't, but it still kind of rocks talking to the guy that you just saw on stage, so he says, "Joe said you played with them?"

"Yeah, me and Andy-- not at the same time," Patrick says.

"You're drummers?"

"I am," Andy says. "Patrick does everything." He pushes Patrick's shoulder with his own, and it's like they're halfway through an old argument, Patrick rolling his eyes, Andy pushing him.

"I can play guitar as well, so-- but I'm pretty much happier out of the spotlight." He pushes his hat down and it's kind of-- yeah, not cool, but sweet. "You and Joe, you play together?"

"Yeah," Joe says, and Pete fights not to roll his eyes, because Joe sounds kind of starstruck, which Pete puts down to too much time on the dance floor, not enough backstage. "Well, you know, we're kind of in a band, except for not really having one. Drummer transferred at the beginning of the year, and we're kind of--"

"Joe had some equipment failure-- ow!" Pete rubs the back of his head, but grins when Joe hits him.

"It's why the day-job," Joe says. "Weekend job. Whatever."

"You could practice at mine," Patrick says. Pete raises his eyebrows, because yeah, they're right back to come up and look at my etchings, little boy, and Patrick's not cool enough to carry that off.

"I don't know, Joe has a curfew. No going home with strange men after 11pm." Pete folds his arms and looks forbidding. He's not a big guy and he looks his age, mostly, but he can look scary if he wants, sharp and teenage-reckless.

Andy laughs and pushes his glasses more secure. "Hey, Patrick almost never keeps high school boys in his basement anymore, not since the thing with-- you don't need to hear about that."

"It was very messy," Patrick says, deadpan for a moment before breaking and looking down, smiling. "No, I just meant, I know how hard it is to practise when you're getting started. Finding a place where you're not going to piss off the neighbours or your family, getting the equipment… So you know, if you wanted."

Pete's still not sure about this guy, but they do need a place to practice, so he nods and says, "Yeah, sounds cool."

Patrick smiles and Andy's arm is around his shoulder, and Pete thinks maybe-- well, maybe, when he doesn't have a good shot with a pretty bass player. Some other time. He's got no real intentions, but he puts them in the list of maybes.

"Cool," Patrick says. "You've got my number," he says to Joe, "so just let me know."

"Thanks! This is really-- yeah, my parents are supportive and all, but… you know, I don't want to push it," Joe says.

"It's-- really, it's cool," Patrick says. Pete wonders if maybe he really is interested in Joe, but Patrick nods at Pete. "You're welcome."

"We can share the benefits of our great wisdom," Andy says. "All that hard-earned experience. Like, very few execs keep their contracts in their motel room. Patrick learnt that the hard way..."

"Asshole," Patrick says, but smiling. Pete realises that they're in pretty much the same position, him and Patrick. Andy's hands on Patrick's shoulders, pushing down, and Joe keeping him right where he is the same way.

"He's your friend, right? A good friend?" Pete says, nodding at Andy.

"Yeah," Patrick says, sounding like that's just tragic.

Pete smiles sympathetically. "Friends suck, they really do. And not in the good way."

Patrick laughs, just a little like he's swallowing it back. "Yeah. All those years I spent wanting a friend, any friend, just one, and it turns out they all suck."

"I'm gonna remember you said that," Andy says. "When you're least expecting it, my revenge will swift and merciless." He bumps Patrick and Patrick ducks his head so his hat covers his face, and Pete thinks, yeah, definitely a maybe. Maybe even a yes, and he shrugs Joe's hands off his shoulders and pushes his hair off his face, showing off his body. He's not built, but he's lean and he looks good, he knows. "I'm thirsty, can I--" He gestures at the glass.

"Huh?" Patrick looks at it like he's forgotten he's holding it, then shrugs. "Sure. It's just orange juice. I don't really drink much."

"That's okay," Pete says. "I'm underage anyway." Smiles his best jailbait grin and takes it. He really is thirsty. "So I'm going to go find-- Robbie, you said his name was, right?"

"I didn't think you knew him," Patrick says.

"He doesn't," Joe says.

"Not yet." Pete grins when Patrick goes from looking surprised to understanding, shaking his head a little.

It's cute, because Patrick looks like he'd maybe be blushing or something, if the light was better, and Pete's pretty sure Patrick wasn't sleeping with random hot bass players when he was Pete's age. Probably isn't now, even if he is in a band with them.

"Wasn't there something about no strange guys after 11 pm," Andy says.

"Hey, Joe has a curfew," he says. "I don't." He steps away from Joe and holds his hand out, shaking Patrick's and then Andy's, like it's a formal greeting.

"See you around," Andy says, sounding amused, but Pete doesn't take it badly.

"Definitely," Pete says, and slips away to find the bassist.

 

 

Joe makes them wait two days before calling, no matter how many times Pete points out that that rules stuff is bullshit, and if Joe has a crush on Patrick and/or Andy, he should just blow them or something. He kind of doubts they'd put up a fight.

And then Joe drags him around, right after soccer practice when Pete's barely had time to jump in the shower and pull on a cleanish T-shirt. "I already got your bass," Joe tells him.

"This crush, it's cute and everything, but seriously--"

"Seriously nothing! Look, they're-- we need someone to practice with, and they know what they're doing. I have a good feeling about this," Joe says as they get out the car. He says it like that's the ultimate argument, like he's suddenly developed psychic powers. Joe the Soothsayer. Joe "Destiny" Trohman, guitarist and student by day, superhero and part time stripper by night.

Joe's shiny new powers must be on the fritz, because there is no way their fate is leading them here. Pete knows this because when they open the door, Patrick's wearing an argyle sweater and black socks that Pete can see very clearly because Patrick is wearing shorts.

"Oh, you're kidding me," he says and starts to turn around.

Patrick looks down at himself, and he seems like a nice guy, really, but *fuck*. Joe catches Pete's shoulders and pushes him inside. "Hey. You said we could come round?"

Patrick steps back and waves them in. "Yeah, I was just-- sorry, late night. I have this thing, piano in a hotel lobby and it runs late sometimes." He yawns and covers his mouth with the back of his hand and it's pretty fucking adorable. Still doesn't excuse the sweater and the shorts and dear god, the socks, but maybe he just doesn't know any better. Maybe he just needs someone to show him the light.

"You play piano?" Pete says, looking around. Not bad, a couple of decent posters on the wall, pictures of family and friends, so at least Patrick's probably not a complete psycho loner.

"Keeps me in takeout and shiny new instruments, helps pay for tuition fees," Patrick says. "And it's easy to take time off when I get something real or if I need to cram for something."

They head down to the basement, which is a decent size, but pretty much packed. There's a couch and a small window that lets in a little bit of light, a drum kit set up already and two guitar cases leaning against the wall.

It's clean, but Patrick picks up some magazines, kind of awkward, shuffling them about. "Uh, do you need to call your parents or something? So they know you're not in some psycho's basement or something?"

"We still don't know that we're not," Pete points out, but he grins at Patrick anyway. He gets his bass out and looks for where he can plug it in. Patrick helps him and Joe with quick, confident hands and Pete's suddenly self-conscious. Patrick can, apparently, play piano enough to get paid for it, play drums enough to fill in for someone, as well as play guitar. Pete's got no illusions about his own skills. "I'm, you know, I'm not saying I'm brilliant at this. I love playing, so--" Pete shrugs.

So they kick off and it's easier on stage, because he can move and there's an audience and he doesn't have to think about what he's doing, and he's not aware that Patrick is probably sitting there and thinking yeah, another teenage musician wannabe.

And then he thinks, argyle, and really, Patrick's in no position to be making judgments. So he goes through the song, waiting for Joe to pick it up, and it's okay. They really do need the practice, but it's still so much better to actually be making *noise* again. Pete can't sing, but he's got a good scream and he can go nuts without worrying about worrying anyone.

They finish the song and he looks at Patrick, daring him to say something, but Patrick just kind of shakes his head and says, "You guys must kill on stage," kind of wistful.

"Very few recorded fatalities," Pete says, his throat dry.

"We kind of suck, but we're not that bad," Joe says, looking way too cheerful. "It's just hard, you know, especially since we don't have a drummer or a singer that can actually sing."

Pete shrugs, because it's pretty much true, but Patrick says, "You're not--"

"No, we're fucking awesome, don't get me wrong," Pete says. "Just because we're not great now doesn't take away the fact that we're secretly awesome."

"I don't think it's a real secret if you tell people," Patrick says. "If you want-- you know that bit, leading in? If you switched that around, maybe used the bridge in-- let me show you--" and he borrows Joe's guitar, which Joe hands over easily enough to make Pete suspicious. Joe always seemed pretty much straight, but he's giving serious thought to reconsidering that in the face of the guy-crush he seems to have on Patrick.

Which Pete kind of doesn't get, because Patrick's-- well, cute, maybe, sort of attractive, but in that way that makes you crush on the girl who sits next to you in chem because of how she chews the top of her pencil when she's thinking, not the kind of hot that makes you grab someone off the dance-floor and drag them to a bathroom or a booth or just a convenient corner.

And then, halfway through the chord --he does have good hands, mobile, sketching out drum beats and chords when he's not actually playing them-- Patrick hums a couple of bars and Pete says, "Hey, sing something."

Patrick kind of ducks his head and his hands go from da-dum-da on an imaginary drum kit to fiddling with his cuffs, straightening them out. "No, I'm not a singer. Just drums and sometimes guitar or whatever there's space for."

Pete doesn't let himself get distracted by the hands thing. "Just-- please?"

Patrick shrugs and sings and Pete decides, then and there, that Patrick obviously needs him, because he's going around in argyle and saying he can't sing and his friends have obviously failed to let him know that both of those things are very, very wrong, and it's down to Pete to show him the light.

Patrick needs him, Pete thinks, watching the way his head tilts up and shows his throat when he sings.

 

Patrick goes to get them some coffee. Patrick's polite, which is-- Pete's mom would approve. Pete approves, the way he always approves of people that give him caffeine.

Joe's a laidback kind of guy, mostly, which is why Pete knows that he's practically buzzing when Joe looks at him and smiles. "So?" Joe says.

"What?"

Joe rolls his eyes like Pete is being willing obtuse. "So, Patrick? You know he's between bands right now." He leans in and says, "Don't scare him off by coming on too strong, we've got to get him in the band before he realises he should be running away."

"We don't have a band," Pete says. "We're just us."

"And now Patrick," Joe says. "But seriously, we can't just drop that on him. Baby steps, like taming a deer or something, so he doesn't freak out and think we're obsessed teenage stalkers."

Pete shakes his head and says, "And people think I'm the scary one."

"No," Joe says. "No-one thinks that." Like he's trying to break the bad news to him.

"Fuck you," Pete says, faking trying to hit him with his guitar.

"I got-- I forgot to ask if you wanted milk or sugar, so I just brought it all down," Patrick says, coming downstairs with a tray. He's still got this stupid baseball cap on and he's smiling like he knows he's acting like a dork and thinks it's kind of funny.

"We're going to be so fucking awesome," Pete says. He hears Joe groan and say, "like talking to a brick wall," but he ignores him.

"You are?" Patrick says, putting the tray down.

"We, *we* are," Pete says. "They're going to have to invent a whole new category for how incredible we're going to be."

Patrick's smiling, like he doesn't get what Pete's saying. "Cool."

"Yeah," Pete says. "We--" and he gestures at all of them, Joe on the sofa, still shaking his head, Patrick standing in front of them, "We are going to be fan-fucking-tastic."

 

 

And it's not quite as easy as that, because Patrick and Andy are obviously much slower on the whole fated-to-be thing than Joe and Pete, but they're a band, kind of. Andy and Patrick have other people they play with and Andy's pretty much a bandslut, but the thing is, Pete knows that Joe and him are really not that great, not compared to the people Andy and Patrick usually plays with. It's not like Patrick lets them in his home because of his mad guitar skills, and since they haven't actually tried anything on Pete or Joe, despite Pete being pretty fucking hot and Joe being pretty fucking obvious about the fact he's practically got them all in white and walking down the aisle together.

Which means that they must see it too, even if they don't know it. Patrick and Andy get the same vibe, that same bit of knowledge that, as long as they don't fuck it up, they're just amazing in the making. Because honestly, why the hell would they put up with them otherwise?

It's okay that Patrick smiles at him sometimes like Pete's a kid, and then gives Andy a look after, even though Pete would normally hate that kind of thing, especially when Patrick's not that much older than him. He's still in college, and Pete is way fucking older than his years. He's okay with it, because it’s obvious that Patrick cannot be trusted to live his life without Pete's input. He only thinks he was managing fine, but seriously, even if you ignore the clothes, you're still left with the fact that Patrick says things like, "I'm thinking about focusing on production, behind the scenes stuff. I'm not really anyone's idea of a rockstar, right?"

Like Pete hasn't seen him *lose himself* playing. They've gone to a couple of shows where Patrick played drums and one where he was rhythm guitar, and he's not like Pete and Joe who get high from the audience, but he obviously feels it too. That rush, collective emotion and movement and beat, and the way it makes music not just what you make, but what you breathe, what you *are* for that moment on stage. He comes off stage sweaty and afterglow, and maybe the groupies don't go for him like the do the lead singer, but maybe that's just because Patrick doesn't seem to go for them. Ever. Not even Pete, who isn't a groupie, but is usually right there and is, vanity aside, pretty fucking hot.

He asks Joe on the grounds that Joe's still not over his stalker crush and has probably been following Patrick home at night. "So does he have a girlfriend or something?"

Joe shrugs. "Dunno, why? Are you-- oh, dude, Pete, no."

Pete rolls. "No, nothing. Seriously. I just get a weird vibe from him, sometimes. It's just kind of odd."

"Weird like how?"

He frowns a little, thinking about it. The way Patrick is bizarrely tolerant of Pete's flying attacks, but never really does the same. They way he's careful not to touch Pete too much or-- no, careful is the wrong word, it implies that it's deliberate, and with Patrick it's more like he just doesn't see the opportunity. It's weird, but Joe just shakes his head when Pete tries to explain this

"So he's suspect because he isn't leching on you? Nice ego there, Wentz."

"Yeah, I don't see him dragging you to his bedroom either, Trohman." And that just gets them into a wrestling match that leaves Pete with minor injuries, mostly to his pride when he has to declare himself Joe's bitch.

 

 

Patrick has this evening job, piano in a hotel lobby, and Andy agrees to take them to watch Patrick play because Andy is the kind of guy that's sometimes a little evil to his friends. Pete's like that too, so he can recognise it in Andy, even if Andy is more subtle about it.

He recognises Patrick immediately, which is surprising because he doesn't look anything like he usually does and all Pete can see of him is a black jacket and a fedora or something sitting at the piano. He might take that as a sign, except that it really isn't, because Patrick playing is Patrick playing, no matter what.

He kind of recognises the music, but not specifically. More like he's heard Patrick sing it around the apartment or before rehearsals, or maybe on some radio station some time. What he recognises more is the set of Patrick's shoulders, the tilt of his head. He almost jumps when Andy drops his hand on Pete's back and turns his head to see Andy smiling. "Think he'd like a visit from his friends?"

"Can’t see why he wouldn't," Pete says. "We're fabulous people."

They stroll over and Pete's very aware of his bleached hair, ripped jeans and T-shirt with the "Parental consent advisory" logo on the front and "Fuck you, you can't tell me what to do" on the back. It makes him grin, makes him saunter across the polished lobby floor.

"Play it, Sam."

"Pete?" Patrick almost flinches, but his hands keep moving over the keys.

Pete leans across the piano, poses. He lowers his voice and tries to sound like Humphrey Bogart. "You know what I want to hear." It comes out more like a come on, but he can go with that.

"I'm working," Patrick says, keeping his voice low. "How did you get--"

"Andy gave me a ride." Pete leans over the piano and Patrick has his head tilted up to look at him. "Nice look. Hot," he says, sincere and joking all at once.

Patrick closes his eyes. "Please never say that about me again."

"You totally are," Pete says, coming around to stand behind him so he can lean over Patrick.

"My bosses tend to frown on their pianists flirting with jailbait and probably troubled teenage boys when they're working," Patrick says. "Doesn't fit in with the atmosphere."

He sounds kind of panicked and it's actually kind of cute, so Pete leans in and says, "But I really, really like you!" in his breathiest, youngest voice and watches Patrick's shoulders shake.

"I'm going to kill you," Patrick says. "And Andy, but first you."

"Sex freaks them out here, but they're okay with murder? Their priorities are kind of fucked." Pete's still whispering in Patrick's ear, but he straightens up a little, puts his hand on Patrick's shoulders. "Hey, I'll leave on one condition. I've got a friend who's throwing this party next week--"

"You need a lift?"

"Dude, I have Joe for that. No, Nick says we can play. Us, the band."

"You got us a gig?" Patrick says, and he sounds almost shocked.

"It's no big deal, we can do mostly covers, just a high school party. They won't be expecting much," Pete says, and he knows he's talking too quickly, so he calms himself down, stops squeezing on Patrick's shoulders as much. "I know we're still pretty rough, but we've got to get out there, you know? Get you used to being in front of the mike. Andy already agreed."

"We haven’t even--"

"Dude, don't make me do the Pretty Woman scene," Pete says. "Because I will and you know it."

"You're evil," Patrick says. "And must be destroyed."

"He can pay us fifty bucks and all the Doritos we can carry," Pete says, but he knows he has him even before Patrick rolls his eyes --Pete can't see them, but he knows-- and Patrick says, "There better be dip with those chips."

Pete digs his thumbs in like he's giving Patrick a shoulder-rub and he can see his grin in the reflection from the piano. "The finest store-bought salsa you could ask for."

It's just that easy, and Pete isn't even surprised because he's starting to think that this is the sort of thing Patrick's going to do. He's going to give Pete what Pete wants, and it's going to be a habit or something, because he's already started. Bootlegs and CDs and rehearsals and coffee or coke without ever commenting on caffeine and how Pete really doesn't need any more of it, and now this.

"You're the best sugardaddy ever," he tells Patrick. "You give me the nicest presents." And he drops a kiss on the back of Patrick's neck just to hear him squawk and makes a quick retreat.

 

 

 

"Full stomach, stage diving, not the best combination," Pete says, waving away the Doritos when Andy offers them.

"Stage diving?" Andy says, raising an eyebrow at the-- yeah, not so much a stage, more like a corner of the room where they moved the couch back. Pete grins and points at a chair he's set up near his speaker.

"I like to call that planning ahead."

"I'm making Patrick explain to your mom how you broke your neck."

They start playing before anyone really comes, warming up. Patrick's kind of facing them, so he doesn't really notice when people start turning up, not until Pete grins and throws himself at the crowd, twisting around so he hits them with his back, bass still facing the speakers. They shove him back on the stage area and he almost trips on his line but manages to catch himself, stumbling upright. Joe mouths "cool" at him and rolls his eyes, but Pete just grins.

He gets back to his mike in time for his scream, too loud in this room, they've got to get bigger venues, and he looks over at Patrick, wanting him there. Patrick's holding on to the mike with one hand and he's got his head tipped up, eyes closed and it's fucking obscene, but it's like he's all inside himself, concentrating on the music and the notes and self-contained with nothing out there but his voice. Pete leans over and screams into Patrick's mike, making Patrick jump when he realises what Pete's doing. Pete catches Patrick's eye and it's just a second where Patrick relaxes, where something eases, but Pete can feel it in his voice, running through the mike, the room, every body in it.

The song ends and Patrick's fingers are strumming the opening lines of the next one, but Pete knows he probably needs a glass of water by now, so he grabs Patrick's mike and says, "So anyone here not having fun? Because if you don't fucking feel it, you don't fucking belong."

There's a mixture of people calling agreement and one guy Pete vaguely recognises saying, "Yeah, or maybe you just fucking suck!" and Pete grins at them, shows his teeth and yells, "You wish!" while he elbows Patrick, nodding his head at the water bottle.

"So here's what's gonna happen," he says to the crowd. "We're gonna play some tunes--" a couple of "yeahs", some kind of sarcastic, mostly from people he knows. "And you're gonna dance" more agreement there, "And we're gonna bring the motherfucking walls down!"

Patrick straightens up from his water, nods at Andy and Joe and elbows Pete back to his mike, and yeah, that's better, Pete's feeling the crowd even more, and he knows he's gonna get mocked on Monday for it, "'bring the motherfucking walls down' Peter?", but fuck, it doesn't matter if they think he sounds stupid then, because they're right there with them now.

They play straight through the next three tracks, stop for a five minutes to catch their breath and untangle Joe from his wires and Patrick says, "You should definitely do that more."

Pete blinks at him, still show-drunk. "What?"

"The crowd thing. Frontman."

Pete looks at him for a second, then grins, spreads his arms out wide, messianic. "They are my people," he says.

"And you know it," Patrick says, affectionate even though he elbows Pete hard. Patrick looks down at his hands for a moment, and then says, "I think this could really maybe work."

"Yeah?" he says, and it's softer than he means.

"Really. I'm not-- you know," Patrick says, gesturing past the mikes at the crowd. "But you really are."

Pete can feel the back of his neck get hot, feel his smile go wide enough that it almost hurts, because yeah. "So you're admitting that we're a real band? Because seriously, Joe and I have this whole schedule worked out, we were planning on two more weeks, minimum, before we convinced you."

Patrick leans over and curls his hand around Pete's neck. His fingers are cold from the water bottle and Pete exaggerates a shiver. "Fine, we're a real band. Means we have to take it seriously, you know that."

Pete nods and gives up trying to control his grin. It's pointless, especially when "Are you done yet?" he says, raising his voice to Andy and Joe.

"Nearly," Andy says, still frowning and trying to untangle Joe. "Seriously, Trohman, how do you do this?"

"It's a gift," Joe says.

"Done," Andy says, helping Joe step out of the final loop. "Am I going to have to do this after every show?"

"Probably," Patrick says. "But when we get paid, you and me are getting a danger money bonus."

 

 

Pete meets Danielle at the party, even though she arrives late, after they've stopped playing. Danielle is unimpressed when Pete tells her he's in a band, just like she's unimpressed with everything else in the world. She's all sharp nails and cool disdain and occasional bits of humour, and she's absolutely beautiful. She blows him the first time he sees her at a party, but it's still three weeks before she lets him touch her, lets him get his hand in her pants. Three weeks of going to her classes, finding her after school, dropping love letters and names of bands he likes into her locker, before she says yeah, sure, and lets him bring her off in the bathroom of someone else's house. Her hands run over the raised lines of his tattoo, digging in.

She pushes him away after, hard enough that he's going to have bruises, but she kisses him before she leaves the bathroom, soft, gentle. The next day she spends all of Math drawing on his hand in ballpoint, not looking up at all until his right hand and forearm are covered in winding branches and barbed wire. The ink runs out at the top and she keeps going, pressing harder to get little red lines of scratched skin finishing off the pattern. She gets him off in the bathroom before practice and lets him go down on her after.

The pattern is still on his arm when he goes round to see Patrick after, buzzed and excited and ready to apologise for missing practice a couple of times and talk about how fucking amazing life and his new girl is.

"Trick, I'm sorry--" he starts to say when Patrick opens the door. Patrick doesn't slam it in his face, but he turns around and walks back in without saying anything. Pete's smile slides off his face.

Patrick is pissed, which sets Pete on edge. It's not exactly new, because Patrick can be kind of a moody bitch, but it still leaves Pete unsettled whenever it happens.

"You missed the last two practices and you skipped out early on the one before," Patrick says over his shoulder.

"I'm sorry, things were kind of intense and I just--" Pete starts to say

"If you're not serious about the band, you don't have to be." Patrick says and Pete's heart stops. Patrick's still walking, not like he's trying to get away so much as that he really doesn't want to be near Pete right now.

"I am serious," Pete says, following him in to the kitchen. "It's just-- there's this girl, and I swear, I just kind of forgot."

Patrick looks at him and his expression shifts from anger to something softer. "There's nothing wrong with-- you're still in high school, you want to hang out with your friends and--" and that's even worse, Patrick looking at him like he understands, like he doesn't get how much Pete needs this.

"I don't," he says, grabbing Patrick's arm. "Please, Patrick, I'm sorry, I just--" He holds his arm tighter. "I just really like her, you know? And I got kind of focussed, but that doesn't mean-- you know how much this band means to me," he says. He can hear his voice, low and desperate and he kind of hates that, but he hopes it convinces Patrick anyway.

Patrick looks at him and Pete realises how hard his fingers are digging in to Patrick's arms. When he lets go there are white marks in the shape on his hand. "You didn't phone or text or-- I called your mother when you didn't show."

Pete winces and Patrick sighs but rubs Pete's arm just above the patterns Danielle drew. "We were worried. I was worried, Andy was worried, Joe was--"

"Joe sees me at school every day," Pete says. Patrick looks at him and Pete drops his gaze. "Okay, fine. I've been kind of focussed on her, but I'll make it up, and she's-- she's special, you know?" He rubs his arm, feeling the raised lines where she pressed in to hard with the pen, thinking of the way she kissed him after he'd banged into that wall.

Patrick's got that expression again, the one he gets where it's like it hurts him to see Pete. It makes Pete feel angry -he's not a kid, Patrick doesn't get to look at him like he's so young it hurts- and it makes him feel guilty, something heavy and crawling in his stomach at making Patrick worry like that.

"Okay, she's special." Patrick says. "So are we going to meet her?" He smiles, just a little and Pete's nails stop digging in to his palms.

"Yeah, I hope," he says. "She's, you know, she's not impressed by the band thing, and we haven't-- it's not like we've actually gone on dates or anything." He shrugs and smiles a little, helplessly and looks down. "You really called my mom?"

"Don't make it sound so stupid," Patrick says, and gives Pete a quick hug, just long enough for Pete to rest his head on Patrick's shoulder and catch a little glimpse of a fading bruise disappearing under the collar. He gets a flash of Patrick and Faye, just a moment to think that Patrick's at least had someone to distract him. "For all I knew, you were dead in a ditch somewhere."

"I'd come back and haunt you," Pete says. He fakes a bite at Patrick, making him push Pete off. "Ghost zombie! Braaaains! Braaains!" Pete flops his head to one side, hands out in classic undead pose and gives chase.

 

 

 

 

Patrick gives Pete a spare set of keys when he's away on tour so Pete can get some more practice and water Patrick's plants and Pete fails to give it back. He likes seeing them on his keyring next to his own set, likes the reassuring weight of them in his pocket, the feeling of having someplace he can hole up in when he wants to get away from people. He's not sure Patrick knows how much Pete goes over, but it's not like Pete's throwing house parties or anything. He just goes over, waters the plants, maybe has a shower after soccer if he can't face the locker room. He checks out the medicine cabinets, the music collection and the books shelves, but it's not like he's going through the bedside cabinet on a regular basis.

Patrick's place is kind of cool, mostly because he's a pretty big music geek and has no shame about it. He has tapes, CDs, records of pretty much everything. He's got instruments, too. Acoustic guitar, electric, one bass that he says he's holding for a friend, drum kit, keyboard, trumpet, along with random little things -a koto he can't explain, a steel drum, an oboe, half a clarinet. There are mikes and bits of recording equipment, though Patrick mostly uses the studios at his college.

And there are endless stacks and shelves of tapes, CDs, records, reels, and Patrick will press them on you if he thinks there's even half a chance you might like them. Pete picks up one stack at random and tries to work out if any of the bands there are on the CD Pete's got playing in his discman right now. Patrick's latest gift has Cole Porter leading in to some French RnB thing that Pete can only kind of understand the words of, even though the tone is clear as anything.

Good beat too, enough for him to kind of dancing to it as he goes in using the key he's never quite got around to returning. The track comes up to a loud bit and he air-drums with one hand as he pushes open the kitchen with his foot, saying, "Hey, Stump, you in here?"

For a moment, Pete doesn't really connect what he's seeing, because there's a couple having sex on Patrick's kitchen counter and for a moment he thinks, "oh, Patrick's gonna be pissed when I tell him," and starts to smile at the thought of it, what he can say to freak him out the most, and then his brain registers what he's actually seeing, which is a girl on the counter, her legs over Patrick's shoulders, heels digging in and her hands gripping the edge of the counter, back arched and head tilted back and she's moaning and he can hear--

He drops the bags and almost the CDs and it's a crash and he should say something, something like the sort of thing he would say, normally, but it feels like his brain is broken.

The sound makes them both jump, freeze, but he's turned around and backed out the door before they can say anything, and then he's back in the hallway, staring at the door as it swings closed. There's silence for a moment, and then he hears a "Pete?" In Patrick's voice, like he doesn't really want to know the answer.

He thinks about not saying anything, but his mouth disagrees because it says, "Yeah?" before he can stop it.

He can hear a muttered "Oh, fuck," because the door isn't exactly soundproof, and then something that sounds like talking, the girl laughing quietly.

He should go back in there and do something, say something, but--

Her heels digging in to his back, hard enough that she might have left bruises on his pale back, that surprising amount of skin -naked! Patrick, half-naked!- and he'd been-- and pretty fucking good at it, judging by her expression and it's Patrick and--

"Pete? You can come in. Or, you could leave right now and we can all pretend you were never here," Patrick says, then he lets out a little, huff, and says, "What? I'm just giving him the choice." To the girl, Pete assumes.

Pete actually thinks about it for a second, which just proves how off his reactions are about this. Normally, you walk in on your friend going down on some random girl, you tease him about it or watch or ask if you can join in, and unless they're actually going down on your sister or something, it's not something you freak out about.

This, though… It's like walking in on your parents having sex, he thinks, except not at all.

And really, he's got nothing to be embarrassed about, and hey, judging by the girl, Patrick doesn't either, so he smirks and opens the door. "I was planning on asking if you wanted to get something to eat, but--" and it's not the best line he can come up with, but it works, it makes Patrick rolls his eyes and look utterly embarrassed, and the girl kind of laughs. Patrick's got his shirt back on, but he's not wearing a hat and he's standing behind the counter trying to hide behind a glass of water.

Her hair's messy and he wonders if Patrick did that, Patrick tangling his fingers in her hair while she sucked him off. Maybe when he'd walked in, Patrick was just returning the favour or something, but judging by how Patrick's standing behind the counter, no. Which, honestly, is kind of impolite, in Pete's opinion. Sure, maybe Patrick might have been too freaked out by Pete walking in, but she could have at least offered.

"Faye," she says. "Faye Morris. Patrick's girlfriend, which is kind of obvious, probably since you just-- and I'm having major flashbacks to freshman year. Or maybe American Pie II. Sorry, I talk a lot when I'm embarrassed. And you must be Pete, right? Pete Wentz? Patrick's told me so much about you and I was hoping to meet you and Joe, only obviously, not when I was, uh..." She looks at Patrick a little helplessly. "You know, you could jump in any time."

"Can't," Patrick says. "I'm too busy repressing." He closes his eyes and looks like he's concentrating. "I'm pretty sure I can wipe the whole morning from my memory, if I just..."

"Hey, not like it's anything I haven't seen before," Pete says, before Patrick's looks of panic has Pete playing that sentence back in his head. "With other people, I mean. Not you, other people."

"That really, really doesn't help," Patrick says. "I'm pretty sure I can get arrested for letting underage minors--"

"As opposed to overage minors?" Faye says. She holds up her hands in mock surrender when Patrick glares at her, and that's just-- it's weird, because it's like she's not just a girl, not just Patrick's girlfriend, but it's like she and Patrick have this whole *thing* between them that means she makes fun of him in a way that makes him pretend to be angry even when his mouth is smiling. And Patrick's mouth is kind of -- it's probably just the water from the glass Patrick is drinking from, but it makes Pete think even though he's trying to avoid that right now. Patrick's tongue just darts out to lick his lips nervously and then--

And then his girlfriend kisses him and Pete almost jumps at the sudden movement. Faye leans over the counter and kisses Patrick, then leans back and says, "Hey, could be worse. At least you have nothing to be embarrassed abo--"

"Changing the subject now!" Patrick says, turning a pink which looks horrible against his red T-shirt. "If you care for me even a little..."

Faye turns around and grins at Pete and she looks happy, which is probably easy for her, Pete thinks, since it's been less than five minutes since Patrick went down on her. "So you're into music too, right? You play guitar or something?"

"Yeah, I play bass," he says, smiling at her politely. "Looks like I need to work on my timing."

"Maybe just a little," she says.

So it turns out Patrick has a girlfriend, which-- yeah, it's not a surprise, exactly, or at least it shouldn't be. It's not like he expects Patrick to only have friends, only have the band and the guys he works with. It's just a surprise, still.

Faye is nothing special either way. The sort of girl that's hot enough if you like her, average if you don't, brown hair, grey eyes. Smiles a lot, which makes Patrick smile back, so that's good.

She's just-- she's kind of loud, even when she's not saying anything or doing anything. When she's there, she's really there, so there's this space occupied by her and less for everyone else. She swears and she talks fast, kind of breathless, and she touches people a lot when she does. She curls up next to Patrick on the couch, on him, which Pete totally gets, because Patrick is good to curl up on, but it's kind of clingy when she does it all the time, shoving Pete over or taking his space so she can lean against Patrick.

They don't go crazy with the PDAs, but he sees them sometimes, getting a little lost in each other, hands disappearing, before they remember to keep it PG in front of the kids.

She smokes up with Joe. Not heavy, just occasionally, but it's something else she doesn't have in common with Patrick.

One day, Pete comes down to see Patrick and Faye and Joe are sitting on the couch.

"I can't believe I'm fucking a guy," she says, bright and high, giggling like she's gossiping at the lockers. She holds on to Joe's knee and says it again, in that same breathless voice. "And I want to, he takes his clothes off and I'm like, fuck, I want that. Me! It's so fucking weird!"

"I like lesbians," Joe says, leaning his head on hers. "They're hot."

"We like you too," she says. "But I'm a pretty terrible lesbian at the moment, what with the boyfriend that I like having sex with."

"Best kind," Joe says.

"Oh, honey, never say that again." Faye pats Joe on the knee and looks up at Pete. "Patrick's downstairs in the basement."

Patrick's setting up his drum kit when Pete comes down. "You know your girlfriend's kind of gay?"

"That explains the time I caught her in bed with my sister," Patrick says, without looking up. He finishes adjusting the snare and turns to face Pete. "Yeah, I know. She told me when we first got together." He looks at Pete, frowning a little.

"It's cool," Pete says, sitting on one of the barstools liberated from who knows where, kicking his feet against the legs. "I just thought, if you didn't know. It pretty much sucks when the person you've been dating says, 'I don't actually like fucking guys' on you, when two days ago, they liked it just fine." And he doesn't mean to sound as bitter, he was heading for blasé, but it's Patrick, so it doesn't matter. He looks at his feet hovering above the floor, the scuffed toes of his shoes.

"Hey," Patrick says, making Pete look up. Patrick's standing right next to him and he puts his hand on Pete's shoulder, digging in with his thumb. Pete puts his hand on Patrick's wrist, holding it in place and he leans his head on Patrick's hand, closing his eyes. His own thumb skates the underside of Patrick's wrist, just where it's soft. "Sorry."

And then he opens his eyes, tilts his head to look at Patrick and smiles at him because he doesn't like it when Patrick gets hurt over things that happened to Pete. "It's okay. One of those things, you know?"

"High school sucks."

"Yeah, old man, like you can remember that far back," Pete says, straightening up. He grins at Patrick and Patrick smiles back, not exactly happy, but like maybe Pete can distract him. "Seriously, it was a long time ago. I have way more interesting personal tragedies now."

Patrick rolls his eyes, and that's his, "You're not old enough to have a long time ago" eye-roll, but he lets Pete get away with it. "Of course you do," he says. He pats Pete's shoulder. "Thanks for looking out for me. I didn't need it, but thanks for wanting to."

Pete shrugs. "You're my--" and he doesn't say best friend, because that sounds too juvenile, too sincere right now, so he goes with, "you're my lead singer and you're my friend, right?" He leans against Patrick and hugs him. It's a little strange because he's sitting and Patrick is standing, so his head is against Patrick's chest, his arm around his waist. He really doesn't get tired of this, the way Patrick is solid and comfortable and like he was designed for this. He kind of hates having to draw away, because fucking teenage hormones kicking in and getting him hard when he's just trying to enjoy touching Patrick.

 

 

 

Pete's really got no problem with the fact that Patrick and Andy are not band-monogamous. Andy has about ten different bands he plays with and Patrick's always getting calls, someone's sick or broke their arm stage-diving or ran off with the bass-player's boyfriend, and Patrick can do everything. It's okay, really, because it's not like Patrick's playing with those other bands permanently, and Andy's going to settle down one of these days and practice with them sometimes gets rescheduled, but not cancelled, it's just--

There are people who keep calling Patrick and don't even know that he can sing. They leave messages on Patrick's machine, saying "If June and Neet don't work this out, we could use you." Patrick knows people from all over, people he's met in tour, seven degrees of band, people he's done studio stuff for.

So it's not exactly a surprise at a totally random club, first act of three playing, and some random guy with a lip ring and a checked shirt leans over Patrick, arm on his shoulder and says, "So I hear you can sing now?"

Patrick shrugs but doesn't shrug him off or move away. Patrick's pretty tolerant of people, even people Pete doesn't know, hanging on him like that, but he usually shrugs them off eventually. "We're trying it out."

"He's amazing," Pete says, talking over him. "I don't know why the hell no-one had him singing before now." The guy looks him over. Pete crosses his arms and looks back, like he's not impressed, but is willing to be convinced. The guy's kind of hot. Not quite hot enough to risk a pass at a stranger in a pretty hardcore club, but close. "So you're...?"

"Alex. Me and Patrick were in a band, way back when."

Patrick grins, turning his head to look at him. "Band. You say that like we actually played music."

"We weren't-- yeah, we were that bad. Fuck, how old were we? Like fifteen?" The guy, Alex, shakes his head like he can't believe it.

"About that," Patrick says, then he remembers that Pete's still sitting right there and gestures at him. "This is Pete. Bass and crowd control."

Pete rolls his eyes, hah hah, but he offers his hand and Alex has to let go of Patrick's shoulders to shake it.

"We got distracted by his other talents," Alex says. "You should hear him play trombone." He sounds affectionate, happy for Patrick, then he looks back at Pete. "Seriously, I've known Patrick since we were kids, younger than you, and do you know how hard it is to get him to flaunt his stuff on stage?"

"Yeah, I still suck at that," Patrick says. "Pete does the frontman stuff."

"Yeah?" Alex looks at Pete, then looks him over. Pete leans back, just enough to make his expression a little challenging, that line between fuck-you/fuck-me. Alex straightens up so he's not leaning all over Patrick anymore, but his arm is still across his shoulders. He's pretty, and he doesn't act weird about it, the way some guys are, not flaunting it with eyeliner and not exactly hiding it. Pete pictures him at age fifteen, minus the tattoos and piercing, pictures Patrick there as well in the same kid punk band.

"You're hanging around for the show, right?" He says. "Because we've got this new drummer and I kind of want to show him off. You too, Pete." He squeezes Patrick again, but he smiles at Pete.

"Definitely," Pete says, and he meets Alex's eyes, holds them when he smiles back and thinks of Alex, jailbait pretty and hanging all over the Patrick he's seen in a few photos.

Patrick's kind of shaking his head when Alex detaches from him to go set up. He's smiling, just this little half-smile to himself. He's got such a pretty mouth, Pete thinks. He wonders if he used it on Alex.

"What?" Pete says, faking innocence deliberately badly.

"I'm not sure if I should be impressed or afraid," Patrick says. "Nothing, never mind."

Pete shrugs and moves over so he's standing next to Patrick. He leans on him, close enough that he doesn't have to raise his voice over the noise of the club. "So the two of you, exes or old friends?"

"We're still friends," Patrick says.

Pete rolls his eyes and elbows him. "Not what I meant."

Patrick shrugs and looks away, on stage. "Why do you want to know?"

"Old friends are okay," Pete says. "But ex-whatevers are kind of sketchy to hook up with. And don't tell me you didn't sleep with him, because he's kind of blatant."

"Alex's kind of like that anyway," Patrick say. "But, old friends. Still friends, but definitely old friends." He smiles, but it's not really at Pete. A good memory smile.

"I didn't know you'd had boyfriends," Pete says. He shrugs, trying to take the sting out of it. "I'm not totally shocked or anything, but..." he doesn't really know how to end that sentence.

"I wasn't trying to keep it from you," Patrick says, kind of carefully. He looks away. "Boyfriends makes me sound like I had multiple-- I'm really not that interesting." He fiddles with the edge of the table. "Just enough to make it uncomfortable with some of the hardcore bands."

And Pete knows how that goes. He doesn't say, even if he's thinking it, "Does your girlfriend know you like cock too?" and he doesn't think about how far Patrick might have gone, if he'd just hooked up with guys he played with or people safely outside the scene.

"Pete? You do get that, right? I wasn't hiding it from you, I just didn't think to-- it's not like it's that important or that I'm closeted or anything. I mean, my girlfriend--" Patrick says, then stops and laughs. "My girlfriend knows, which sounds kind of strange. And Andy, obviously." He touches Pete's hand, lightly for emphasis. "I wasn't keeping it secret from you. I just forget sometimes that you don't know stuff about me, you know?"

"It's okay," Pete says, because Patrick's so obviously worried that Pete's worried. "Like I said, it's not a shock. We're cool." He sways in to Patrick, just a half second of contact, smiling.

"You are," Patrick says. "I'm pretty sure I'm not. Never have been, never will be."

"You're the lead singer in a band," Pete tells him. "You're cool by definition."

"And still..." He doesn't sound unhappy, just kind of resigned, kind of amused.

"You're fucking cool," Pete says, low pitched and complaining. It's not that Patrick's wrong exactly, except that he totally is, and he just doesn't get that.  
[Part 2/?](http://jamjar.livejournal.com/99908.html)  



	2. Chapter 2

Part 2/5  


Danielle turns up to a few practices. She doesn't get all hyped up about them, even if she says that Andy's kind of cool, but she blows him again and agrees to come and see them when they perform. Pete watches out for her in the crowd, easy to spot her black and orange hoodie and they go out after and get coffee and talk about everything. It's good, it's as good as everything else they do, just talking and the way she lets their fingers touch across the table, and then looks away like she's embarrassed.

They have their first big fight that week when she decides that Pete turning up outside her house to walk to school with her isn't cute but a sign that he's a control freak, fails to answer what her fucking damage is and questions if someone with Pete's reputation isn't spending too much time stalking Andy and Patrick. It's an amazing fight, one that leaves him coasting on righteous fury and satisfied bitterness for the rest of the day, until he catches her panicked look in the cafeteria, that "Please let me not have fucked this up" expression he knows so well from the inside.

Neither of them technically apologise, but they make up enough that Pete's almost late for practice after school, running to catch the bus to Patrick's place.

Patrick is in a bitch of a mood. Pete can feel it before he even gets in, he doesn't need Andy nodding him in to the kitchen and saying, "This is going to be a bad practice. Faye broke up with Patrick, so--"

"Bitch," Pete says, and it's kind of a relief to say that aloud. He's been so careful not to think it in case it slips out. "Fuck, what happened?"

Andy shrugs. "Grew apart, stuff happened."

"I didn't even know they were fighting," Pete says, and that's kind of true. He'd noticed her around less and he didn't have to wait until she got up to take her place on the sofa and she wasn't talking about boring, pointless stuff about people from Acoustics 401 with Patrick, but--

"Is he okay?"

Andy looks at him for a moment, then hits the back of his head. "He just broke up with the girl he's been seeing for more than a year, so no."

And more than a year, that's before he'd even met Pete. Pete folds his arms and says, "She wasn't right for him anyway. She was kind of a bitch."

"You might be happy about this, but try not to let Patrick know," Andy says, his voice hard.

"I'm not happy!" Pete shouts, then lowers his voice. "You think I like seeing my friends hurt? I just think she wasn't right for him, and maybe in the long run it's a good thing they broke up. Was she cheating on him?"

"No, she wasn't," Patrick says and Pete jumps and feels a little better when Andy does as well. "She wasn't cheating on me. I know with your vast romantic experience that this is kind of hard to get, but not every woman cheats on her boyfriend."

Pete slouches in on himself, shoulders hunching automatically. It's not really comforting that Andy does the same, even if he covers it up better.

"And she's not a bitch either," Patrick says. "Or a cunt or a slut or a frigid ice-queen or anything like that." He sounds cold and hard, spitting out the words at Pete. "Faye is still-- we just didn't work out. Got it?"

"Got it," Pete says, making the words hard. He opens his mouth to tell Patrick not to take it out on them that his girlfriend dumped him, but Andy meets his eyes and Pete shuts it again.

So they go downstairs and practice, Joe running in five minutes late and he's either more oblivious or a better actor than Pete gave him credit for, because he's pretty much normal and that gets them through the practice, even with Patrick being psycho strict, making them go over the same chorus again and again and again. Patrick makes a nasty remark about Andy being distracted, playing in too many bands, and apologises right away. Then he tells Pete that he hasn't been practicing enough, and doesn't.

Pete's biting his tongue and tension is like something live in his veins and he's hyper aware of Patrick, of the way his voice is more vicious on the lines Pete wrote for him to sing.

It's all Faye's fault, and Pete's glad she's gone.

But Patrick obviously isn't and Pete hates Faye even more, because he recognises Patrick's movements when he's packing up, he knows that from the inside out. The way your fingers dig into everything a little harder than they have to, the way you keep your movements sharp and precise and controlled so you won't lose it completely. He goes over to Patrick and his hand hovers, uncertain if it's okay to touch him. He settles for a hand on Patrick's shoulder. "Patrick?"

Patrick jerks up and Pete can see his eyes are red, dry by force of will. "What?"

"Just-- I'm sorry?" He says. "For everything?" He gestures at the room, the world. "And for upstairs. I didn't mean..." He trails off, not sure how to end the sentence.

"You know," Patrick says, not looking at Pete, "I think it would've been easier if she had cheated on me, maybe. Or if she was a bitch. Then at least I'd know that we did the right thing, breaking up, and maybe I wouldn't--" He looks down, still hunched over the speakers he was moving, and takes his glasses off and holding them in one hand while the other covers his face. Pete crouches down and then kneels so he can look at Patrick properly.

It's horrible and painful and wrong, to see Patrick looking like that, and Pete can't take it at all, and he's not thinking, just acting, when he pulls Patrick's hand away from his face and kisses him, pulling him down with one hand and trying to find his zipper with the other, frantic movements and he knows he can kiss better than this, that it's too hard and too fast and his hand gets a flash of Patrick's skin at his waist and--

And then he's on his ass on the floor where Patrick pushed him away.

"Pete!" Patrick says. "What the fuck are you doing?"

"What? I was just--" And it hits him, that he's sprawled on the floor where Patrick pushed him away after Pete jumped him, tried to stick his tongue down his throat and his hand down his pants and Patrick's looking at him like Pete's mutant or an alien. His hands dig into the floor and he forces himself not to look away. "I was just-- you were upset, so I thought--"

"You thought you'd jump me? That you'd just-- that we'd fuck and that would-- what were you thinking?" Patrick sounds almost angry and Pete looks away and shrugs.

"I just thought, you know. It's a good way to rebound," Pete says and it sounds stupid, even to him, and Patrick's "--that we'd fuck and--" is replaying in his brain.

"Fuck, Pete. That's-- my girlfriend's just broken up with me and you're sixteen," Patrick says. "I didn't sleep with sixteen year-olds when I was one."

"Look, I wasn't-- and I'm not exactly sweet sixteen and never been kissed," Pete says, getting to his feet. "You know that, you-- it was just a fucking kiss, don't make such a big fucking deal about it."

"Just a fucking kiss and maybe just a fucking *fuck* and--" Patrick shakes his head and combs his fingers through his hair, pushing the hat back. "What made you think... That's not how most people deal with break-ups."

It kind of is, Pete thinks, but doesn't say anything because Patrick isn't looking at him anymore and he doesn't want him to start. It's pointless, because Patrick looks at him anyway. "Yeah, whatever. I misjudged the situation or something. It's nothing." He puts his hands in his jeans and shrugs, looks away but keeps track of Patrick out of the corner of his eye.

"Nothing. Right," Patrick says. His voice sounds hoarse, and it could just be from practice, but it didn't sound like that five minutes ago. Pete looks up, kind of freaked out.

"We're okay, right? It's just one stupid little mistake, I-- you know I have a girlfriend, kind of, so-- we're still cool?" He smiles, but he can feel it stretched across his face like a nervous tic. "You're not going to kick me out of the band or something, right?"

Patrick answers almost immediately. It just feels like years. "No. No, I'm not going to kick you out of the band. It was just a little bit of poor judgment. No big deal," Patrick says, and he smiles a little. Not like it's funny, but still a smile.

"We can just forget it, right? Never happened." Pete says. He steps forward to do something, hug Patrick or pat his arm or something, but stops himself. "We're good." He manages to keep it a statement not the question it wants to be.

Patrick tenses, just for a second, then he relaxes and his arm goes around Pete's shoulders, just a quick little moment of reassuring pressure, of contact. "Yeah, we're good," Patrick says, then straightens up. "I'm going to go and apologise to Joe and Andy for being kind of moody today. I'll see you at practice next week?"

Pete nods and doesn't hide his grin. Patrick hugs him again and Pete breathes easier.

 

 

And it's okay, except that Patrick is awkward for a bit. For a few weeks it's as difficult to be next to him as when Faye was still hanging around. A couple of times it hits Pete again, what he did, what Patrick said, and _Stupid_ , he thinks and punches the side of the gym before soccer practice.

He takes Danielle to the serial comedy special and watches her mouth the words to every line of "So I Married An Axe-Murderer," and then blush when she catches him looking. She grabs his hand and puts it between her legs, reaching over to return the favour, and then after they come, after Pete licks his hand clean and then hers, she takes his hand and holds it for all of Serial Mom.

"I love your hands," she says, when they're getting popcorn in the interval. "Let me paint your nails." She holds it up, his fingers tangled in hers. His knuckles are red and a little swollen, grazed. "It'd look so fucking hot, your hand all beaten up and used, and then these pretty, shiny black nails." She rubs her thumb over his, feeling the callus.

It wouldn't be the first time Pete painted his nails, or even that his whatever of the week did it for him. He wonders if any of Patrick's exes ever did that for him, if he'd refused point blank or just let them, the way he did with people sometimes.

It would look pretty good, he thinks, staring at his hand with Danielle's long, pretty fingers between them. His grazed knuckles and nail varnish, and he wishes he was old enough to get tattooed properly, but that kind of detail work takes money and a tattooist who knows what they're doing. The kind that generally avoid heavy work on the under-eighteens. Danielle drew around his wrist again in Math class, a little cut-here line of dashes and scissors and a twisting daisy chain underneath in green and red ink. He pulls his hand behind him, so she knocks into him and kisses her and is still kind of surprised when she lets him, when she kisses back. They've been pretty much dating for almost two months, if you count the first few weeks.

"I can't wait until we're old enough to get inked," Danielle says, holding his arms. "Like, professionally, not like whatever sketchy place did your back, but like Andy has. His arms are so fucking hot." She smiles, sharp enough that Pete knows she said it at least half to make him jealous, which doesn't stop it working. "You should have him out front," she says.

"Me and Joe and Patrick aren't enough?"

Danielle shrugs. "But he's the pretty one."

"Bitch," he says, admiring her. "I'm too fucking pretty for most people already."

"Mmm. My pretty boyfriend." Danielle brushes the side of his face and then looks down, blushing. It's cute, and he thinks that maybe this is how Patrick and Andy feel, when being sixteen and in high school actually seems young.

"You're so beautiful, it hurts to look at you sometimes," he tells her and her pale skin turns pinker and his kisses her again, it feels hotter against his own.

"Yeah, same to you."

 

They have a show on Friday night, fifty people and Danielle's in the audience, appearing halfway through Saturday. They fuck for the first time that weekend and Pete's so happy Joe almost punches him during practice the next day, stopping to say, "You're probably going to keep smiling even if I do, right?"

"Probably," Pete says. Patrick grins and makes, Kids-today eye contact with Andy and Pete doesn't even care, just jumps on Patrick's shoulders and says, "The world is a fucking beautiful place."

And then he finds out on Monday that, less than twenty-four hours before she slept with him, Danielle screwed some random guy in the bathroom at their show.

 

 

He doesn't get out of bed for a week. His mom leaves food by his bed and he keeps his head under the covers. It's not that he doesn't want to move, but he's afraid what he'll do when he does. There's this ball of pain and anger and jealousy crawling under his skin and he thinks if he sees Danielle, he might kill her or himself or beg her to take him back or--

So he stays under the covers until his mom knocks on the door and says, "Patrick's here."

"I don't want to see him," he yells back, but he can’t lock the door without getting up and Patrick's opening the door before he can do anything, so he just stays where he is.

"Hey," Patrick says. Pete doesn't need to see him to know he's standing in the doorway, awkward and worried. "So I-- Joe said what happened."

"Fucking great," Pete says. "Cunt." He's not sure who he's talking about, but it definitely applies. Patrick comes over and the mattress shifts when he sits on it, making Pete roll a little close. Patrick leans on the lump of Pete under the covers.

"I'm sorry," Patrick says. "This, it really sucks." Pete can feel his arm, the weight of it across his shoulders through the comforter.

"So what, are you on suicide watch?" Pete says. It's mean and he wants it to hurt Patrick. Patrick's hand tightens on his shoulder.

"Do we-- Pete, she's not worth it, she's--" Patrick says, sounding panicked through the layer of calm-the-suicidal teenager.

Pete throws of the covers and stares at the ceiling. "Or it turns out, I'm not. Worth it. Not for her." His face crumples in on itself, like watching a building implode and he turns over, throwing out an arm and hitting Patrick as he does and shoving him off the bed. He doesn't mean to, but he doesn't mean not to. "Get out, Stump. You're not fucking wanted."

"Yeah, because you really should be left on your own right now," Patrick says from the floor.

"You know, it's pretty pathetic, the way you're hanging around with high school kids," Pete says, lifting himself up on his arms to look at Patrick. Patrick's sprawled on the floor, legs bent and arms behind him for balance. "Is that why Faye dumped you? Because she thought maybe there's something pretty fucking screwy about a guy that's about to graduate college spending all his time in a basement with some fucked-up bit of jailbait?"

He drops back on to the bed and goes to pull the covers over him again, and Danielle came over here last week and they fucked on this bed and then he washed the sheets and now he wishes he hadn't because--

"Pete," Patrick says, sitting back on the bed and stopping Pete from pulling the covers over him. "I know it hurts, I know--"

"What do you know about it?" Pete says. "Like this has ever happened to you." He laughs, because the stupid thing is, Pete does know about it. It's not like this is the first time it's happened. He just thought it was different this time.

"You're not the first guy to get his heart broken," Patrick says. "Even if it feels like it."

Pete looks at him and he's not sure if he wants to punch him for understanding or crawl on to his lap. He settles for moving aside so there's more space on the bed. Patrick lies down carefully, on his side and in danger of rolling off and Pete's suddenly, viciously glad that Danielle's not the last person in here anymore, even if it's only Patrick. He ducks his head and bites his tongue against the painangerpain, and lets Patrick put his arm around him so he's a little more secure. "Hey," Patrick says, making him look up. "She isn't worth it. She's a bitch." He smiles at Pete, off-centre and worried.

Pete's mouth smiles back, even if the rest of him doesn't want to. "Yeah?"

"Psycho bitch," Patrick says, and it's weird hearing Patrick call someone that, enough to make Pete's smile stretch out a little wider. He rubs his head against Patrick's shoulder and breathes in and it smells like Patrick in Pete's bed, his showergel and Pete's deodorant and Pete being in here too long, and nothing like Danielle and her shampoo and sex.

"I miss her," he says, so quiet that he doesn't know if he wants Patrick to hear. "Do you think..." He trails off.

"Don't," Patrick says. "You're better off without her. It's gonna be okay." Pete shrugs against him and doesn't ask him to promise.

 

 

School is pretty much hell the next day, and Patrick apparently had words or something with Joe, because Joe does not fucking leave him alone the whole day which doesn't exactly help his plan to stay low-profile. He tries to avoid him, avoid everyone. Patrick's set up a practice after school, even though Pete knows Patrick normally works on Mondays, and he's just counting until he can get there and do that. Just get through the next five minutes, fighting to take each breath and not looking anyone in the eye, and he can go to Patrick's and scream and make Patrick take his words out of his head and put them in Patrick's mouth so he won't have to think about it, because Patrick will be doing that for him.

And he'll still have to deal with Joe looking at him like he's waiting to tackle Pete before he runs into traffic, Andy's remorseless understanding, but if he doesn't think about that, it's okay. Thinking about their care, his family's and his friends, just leaves him feeling oversensitive. He needs it, wants it, but it hurts almost as much to have it as to--

As to see Danielle standing at the end of the hallway. She looks at him, just for a second then turns around and he chases after her, Joe chasing after him until all three of them are in one of science labs that smells like chemicals and ink.

"Pete, you don't want--"

"Shut--" Joe grabs his shoulders to turn him around and Pete almost punches him, but changes it to, "I need to--" He turns back to Danielle, leaning against the wall next to a poster of the periodic table. He shrugs Joe off and then he's standing in front of her. "Why? What-- You couldn't just fucking break up with me the normal way, you fuck someone else and then me for the first fucking time and--"

"I didn't break up with you," Danielle says.

Pete is actually speechless and then his hand is hurting and he realises he punched the wall next to her, hard enough to crack the paint. Joe's behind him, got his arms in a lock, and Pete doesn't fight it. "Get out," Joe says to her, but Danielle ignores him

"Missed," she says, smiling at Pete, pretty and _psycho-bitch_ goes through his head in Patrick's voice, and then she looks down and her face-- it's just a second, and she has her head tilted down so her hair covers her face, but he can see it crumple in a choked-back sob. She swallows it down and looks up at him, mouth tight and eyes red.

"You fucked some guy at our show, and then you-- what was that, throwing me a fucking bone?"

"What the fuck do you care?" She shoves him back and it makes both of them stumble, but Joe catches his balance and keeps Pete in the same hold. Her head falls forward, hunching over and her hands dig in to the wall. "I just did it, okay? I don't--"

His hand is hurting and when he looks down he can see that his knuckles are bleeding. There's a smear of red on the wall near Danielle's head, and he can see her chest shake, hear her choked back sobs and he wants to scream at her, wants to hold her and tell her he forgives her. Wants to make everything better for her, and she's hurting, and he kind of wants to kill her for hurting herself like that.

It’s probably a good thing Joe is holding him back, because his hand twitches, just to push her hair back, stroke the side of her face. Make her look at him. "You're not worth it," he says. He can see her tense, stopping herself from flinching like she's bracing for a punch. "You, you're just not worth one fucking bit of it." He relaxes and feels Joe loosen his hold, just a little, enough for Pete to straighten up, smile at and be as vicious as he can when he says, "You're not worth one fucking bit of my time or care or attention. Have a great life, Danielle. I'm sure you'll get exactly what you deserve."

They have a decent practice, even though half of it is Pete scribbling down lines because Patrick needs them on paper to make them work, not just said, and he gets home still riding that wave of righteous anger. He really doesn't want to stop, because the moment he does --flashes of the shape of her smile, those oddly shy moments, her hips, her hands, the way she'd looked when-- he'll have to deal with the fact that he misses her.

He eats dinner. He can see his parents relax and feels a little less guilty, and when he lies in bed he can pick up faint traces of Patrick from earlier. He kind of wishes Patrick wore a cologne or something, aftershave, so it'd be stronger, but it's good anyway.

He should go out and get laid, find someone so Pete doesn't have her as the last person on his skin. Patrick, Joe, even Andy's "Bitch," and hug, that helps, but-- someone to fuck, someone to fuck him, strong and hard and good enough to wipe out the little memories of Danielle's hands, her watching him roll the condom on like he was putting on a show, of her biting her lip and saying, "Oh, Pete, yes, *move*," when he was inside her.

Pete turns onto his back on the bed and thinks -Ruthie? Bill? Nicky? Reliable and no questions asked, but it's a bit late even for him to make a booty call, Monday night and his parents are downstairs. That joke about why men like masturbation runs through his head, "It's sex with the only one they really love." It's kind of funny, so he flicks through the fantasy files he keeps for something not her, and yeah, there's a good one.

He pictures Patrick as he was back then, sixteen, seventeen. Shyer than he is now, hunched in and hidden away at the back of class. Blushing, maybe, when he talked to a cute girl or that teacher he had a crush on. Blushing when he talked to Pete and stuttering a little because Pete is hot, Pete is experienced, Pete is cool and Patrick jerks off to him nightly.

Sweet sixteen and never been kissed, never been fucked and Pete doesn't have a virgin kink exactly, but he can picture it, being the first one to touch him. Patrick at sixteen, all frustration and embarrassment and Pete would notice him, maybe see Patrick watching him in class, looking a little too long on the pitch. Embarrassed and freaked out when he realised Pete had noticed. Pete licks his lips, slides his hands down his body, eyes closed.

Patrick wouldn't have any defenses, not against Pete, not when he was probably still jerking off twice a day and once between class. Pete would maybe corner him, take advantage of his reputation. Find him in the locker rooms or the library and say, "I know you've been watching me."

And Patrick would stutter, would look away and probably wonder if Pete was going to beat him up or just humiliate him, and hate himself a little for still getting off on having Pete --on having anyone-- that close and invading his personal space. "I don't know what--"

"I know what you want," Pete would tell him, and he'd push him into the wall, palming his cock through his jeans, and Patrick at sixteen would be shocked, defenceless, grinding back without meaning to. Pete would undo his jeans one handed, the other next to Patrick's head, bracing Pete against the wall, and Pete would curl his hands around Patrick and Patrick would groan. Pete would kiss him, pushy but not too pushy, because Patrick was still new to this, don't scare him off.

Maybe Patrick jerks, maybe he bites Pete's lip or his hands go to Pete, pushing his T-shirt up, greedy and Patrick says, "I've never done this before. I'm sorry, I don't know what to do." But he wants to, wants to do whatever Pete wants him to, wants to be touched however Pete wants to touch him.

"It's okay, I do," Pete tells him, and he drops to his knees and Patrick almost comes just from Pete doing that and Pete makes it good, draws it out and shows every trick he ever learnt for all of 30 seconds before it's too much, no-one's ever done this for Patrick, to Patrick before, Pete's the first and Patrick comes and Pete swallows it all, stands up and kisses him while Patrick's still shocky from it. Patrick's stunned expression, looking at Pete like he's not sure if he's real, that this isn't just another wet dream.

And Pete would kiss him, a little softer but letting Patrick taste himself on Pete, and he'd take Patrick's hand, put it on Pete's cock and say, "everything, I'll show you everything." And Patrick would close his eyes like that's the most amazing thing he'd ever heard and his fingers would curl around Pete and stroke, awkward at first because of the new angle, doing it with the same rhythm he does to himself, and then maybe switching, listening to Pete's groans and learning what works for him and--

And Pete comes over himself, caught up in the fantasy. He breathes heavily, listening to himself, then straightens up, cleans himself off and moves over to the other bed.

It smells of laundry detergent and nothing else, not Patrick or Danielle or even Pete, not really.

_"I didn't sleep with sixteen year-olds when I was one."_

He falls asleep thinking that it sucks that he has to pay because Patrick was a late bloomer.

 

 

The good thing, the only good thing to come out of the Danielle thing (and Pete has to stop himself remembering too clearly so he can keep believing that) is the music. He writes pages and pages of confusion and pain and bitterness and Patrick makes him show it by asking, and then he turns it into something that makes sense. And then he gets on stage and sings Pete's words and Pete can't stop looking at him, because it's Patrick, but it's different, like he's wearing Pete's mark. Patrick's not comfortable with strangers looking at him, which Pete doesn't get --he's got to be used to it by now, right?-- but when he's got the guitar in front of him, when he's singing it's like he's armoured in music and that makes it okay.

It's hot, which isn't a surprise because being on stage, crowd screaming with you, for you, you and your bandmates, your brothers on the same high, singing the same song--

Gestalt, Pete thinks in between tracks, catches Joe's eyes and grins before the next song takes them over.

There's a show, maybe a hundred people, which they get mostly because Andy's playing drums with the headliner's lead singer's other band. Pete calls Andy their little honey trap and jokes about putting on street corners with a smile, a snare-drum and six-inch heels, until Patrick disappears into the van and comes back with a fedora. "Your new pimp hat," Patrick says, sticking it on Pete's head.

Pete adjusts it slightly, slaps Andy on the back and says, "Now get out there and show some skin, baby."

"You are never allowed to say that again," Andy says. "Joe, take that hat off him, he can't handle it."

Joe grabs for it and Pete holds it on his head with both hands and they wrestle. It's good, physical contact and closeness and Pete can't stop laughing until Patrick joins in, steals the hat back and holds it away from both of them.

"Patrick!" Pete says. "You're my best friend, you're on my side, right?"

Patrick shakes his head. "I'm sorry, Pete. I thought you were ready for the awesome responsibility of the hat." He puts it on his own head, tilting it forward so it covers his eyes. It's one of those moments that derails Pete, where he stops thinking whatever he was thinking before and it's just-- Patrick. It's not like the stage moments or the couch moments, the ones where Pete's expecting it, the situation practically demands it. It's just one of the ones that blindside him.

But he's pretty used to covering those up by now, so it only takes him a second to recover, pout and say, "Fine, but when Andy's out there tonight without protection--" and then start laughing.

There's a girl he catches sight of in the show, purple hair and grey eyes, and he wants her. Wants to fuck someone, with a pure and physical hunger that's detached from everything else, and he knows he wouldn't be thinking about anything else when he does. It's a relief more than anything else. He's fooled around a little post-Danielle, but it felt like revenge fucks even when they weren't.

This one will be just for him, just because right now, he wants it. He plans on waiting after the show, but she grabs him when he's coming off stage and kisses him, one hand on his cock before he can say hello, and fuck, but it's good. His bass is between them and he says, "I've got to--" before turning to look at his band. He should help them pack up, but Joe grabs his bass off him and says, "Why do you get all the groupies?"

"Karma," Pete says, even though he knows it makes no sense. She ends up dragging him off into a stairwell and it's good and fast and exactly what he needs, and she's done, too, smiling and panting and saying, "I love musicians. You all were fucking awesome." as she unwraps her legs from around him.

"Yeah," he says. "Thanks." His smile is wide and sincere and he means every word.

He heads back to the others, post-show afterglow, post-sex rush and it's all the same, so when Joe opens the door, he says, "I could kiss you right now."

"I know where that mouth's been," Joe says, backing up.

"We just fucked, it's not like I went down on her," Pete says, making his voice reasonable just to see Joe squirm.

"Most people spend the afterglow with the person that caused it," Joe said. "Health class was very clear on that."

Pete spreads his arms wide, catching Joe and hooking in Andy at the same time. "But I'd rather share it with you guys. My guys." It's absolutely true and Andy and Joe hug him back, strong and sincere, before he detaches and goes to Patrick to hug him too. It's as good as it always is and bends his head just to the crook of Patrick's neck and breathes in to get that little bit of recognition, of Patrick-show-mine-us-Patrick.

Patrick looks at him, kind of off. "What?" Pete says.

"Nothing," Patrick says. He shakes his head and kind of smiles and Pete crosses his arms, weirdly self-conscious until Patrick pulls him back in. Patrick isn't like Pete, he doesn't cling like Pete, sprawl across someone for hours and bury himself in their shirt, but he gives good contact. No awkwardness or holding himself back.

Pete grins and says, "I fucking love this band."

Patrick doesn't blink, just says, "You're only saying that so we'll put out."

Pete laughs. "Well, you and Andy maybe. Joe's saving himself for his wedding night."

"My parents raised me right," Joe says, thumping Pete on the back.

It's late enough when the show ends that they all end up crashing at Patrick's, rather than waking up their various parents and roommates. They unload the van and Pete's that particular kind of drunk that you only get from being tired and wired at the same time, talking over himself and play-fighting. Scissors-paper-stone puts Joe on the basement couch while Patrick, Pete and Andy have the relative comfort of Patrick's double-bed. Pete takes a quick shower, but isn't surprised when Patrick just takes off his jeans and barely makes it under the covers. Andy doesn't even manage that, falling on to the bed hard enough to make the mattress jump, and Pete goes around to pull the cover over him. The role-reversal feels strange but good, and he pulls Andy's glasses off and puts them on one of the little bedside cabinets before getting in to bed on the other side of Patrick.

Patrick's eyes open and he blinks at him a few times, his face looking naked without the usual shields of the hat and glasses.

"Good show," Pete says, quietly so they don't disturb Andy, resting his head on his hand.

Patrick nods and his eyes close. Pete can hear his breathing slow down and he watches. He doesn't feel sleepy. Tired verging on exhausted, but not sleepy. When he breathes in, he gets that hit of feeling, the _I love these guys_ that's like falling in love without any of the usual foreboding that goes with it. Patrick's breathing feels good, feels better than good. It feels right. Pete rolls closer, careful not to disturb anyone and just close enough that his knee touches Patrick's and he can rest one hand over Patrick's side.

He falls asleep like that.

 

 

Pete knows that Patrick's got college, but it doesn't really hit him until Patrick turns up all excited and says, "So my professor thinks she can get me this internship in New York. Just a short thing, six weeks, but it's with this label, Principle Uncertainty."

"Six weeks? When?" Pete says. His throat's dry and six weeks? Does that include travel? Six weeks is a month and a half is 42 days is-- and Patrick gets upset if he misses one practice and he's gonna be gone six weeks?

"Next month," Patrick says. "I'll be shadowing a producer for most of that, but apparently they'll get me doing grunt work for most of the departments. Pete?"

Pete pulls himself together enough to say, "Wow, that sounds incredible," and even mean it mostly. "New York! You got a place to stay?"

"Friend of a friend's going to let me crash on his couch, at least until I can find a place of my own." Patrick adjusts his hat. "I've got to see if I can rent this place out for a month, I've got to get tickets and--"

 

 

Pete spends most of next class filling in the diagonals on his jeans in ballpoint, blue ink staining them. When his knee and left thigh are done, he switches to writing in his notebook, lines about rejection and being left behind that don't sound as vicious as he means them to. They just sound sad and pathetic and fucking juvenile. Nothing he can show to Patrick when he comes back. If he comes back. If he doesn't get-- there are a lot of good musicians in New York, and a lot of sleazy producers and Patrick is too fucking nice.

He spends the next class writing nasty, brutal lines about whores and seduction and theft, so at least that's an improvement. There's soccer practise after lunch and the coach makes him run extra laps because, "that shit wouldn't be allowed in England, Wentz." Which, whatever. Not like he meant to kick that hard, and if Justin can't handle a tackle that's a little bit more aggressive, maybe he shouldn't be playing.

He gets some nasty bruises on his legs and he can't even show them to Patrick who always acts appropriately impressed, so he takes a picture using someone's camera-phone and sends it to Patrick.

He gets a reply three hours later.

_Ouch dont send pics like this giving me a bad rep._

He grins, and then wonders who else saw the picture, if Patrick showed it to them or if they just answered his phone or what. He debates sending a picture of him in his soccer kit, maybe shirt off and in front of a school sign, just to give Patrick something worth explaining.

He checks his mail when he gets home, but there's just the "arrived safely" email, cc to pretty much everyone. New York is warmer than Patrick thought, his roommate is nice, he's got one day of sightseeing before he starts work. He sends everyone his love.

Pete looks through the CCs and recognises Andy's email, Joe's. Nothing for a faye.morris or a f.morris or a faye.girl or anything obvious like that, unless she's one of the others, videokilled@yahoo, deco2000@ hotmail or something. Patrick doesn't talk about her much, but Pete's got the impression they're doing the still friends school of break-up denial, which isn’t healthy.

He sends a quick reply, something about watching out for strangers and not staying out late, then works on his words so he has an excuse to email him. He gives up two hours in, throwing the notebook at the wall, and writes an email about school, lunch, everything he can think of, then leaves it sitting, unsent.

Homework, then he practices on the bass, making a note of what's giving him trouble so he can get Patrick to help him when he gets back.

His email is still there, mocking him, so he adds a little note asking how often Patrick's thyme needs watering, giving him an excuse for writing to him, and sends it before dinner. He doesn't think about it all when he's eating or clearing up.

No reply when he gets back which makes sense, because it's only been thirty minutes since he sent it and Patrick's probably still out doing stuff anyway. He should probably call Joe and Andy, arrange a practice session anyway. Or he could go round to Patrick's to water his plants.

It's not like he sees Patrick every day, and they almost never have practice on a Monday, so he doesn't know why it feels like he's got way too much time on his hands now. He does homework because he can't think of anything else to do, then looks up crime statistics for New York.

The phone rings at nine and Pete grabs it before anyone else can.

"Yeah?"

"That's how you answer your phone? I've met your mom, I know she raised you better," Joe says, sounding amused.

Pete falls back on the bed. "I'm trying to overcome my upbringing. Raised by wolves looks better in the liner notes."

"That's why you're our frontman," Joe says. "You're better at that marketing, PR stuff. I would have just said raised by seals or something. Manatees."

"Manatees are cool," Pete says. "You got Patrick's email?"

"Yeah. I was thinking we should have a practice anyway, maybe Sunday? You've got the keys to his place, right?" It's actually a little strange, hearing Joe on the phone when Pete usually sees him in person. He never has to phone him, because he sees him every day in class or at the weekend. "Pete? You still there?"

"Yeah," Pete says. "Sorry, I was just-- long day."

"You probably didn't sleep well last night," Joe says. "Up all night worrying about Patrick being kidnapped by stewardesses on the way to New York."

"It could happen! I read it in Playboy." Pete grins at the ceiling. "They lure you up to first class with the promise of free champagne and all the peanuts you can eat, and next thing you know, you're stripped naked and being taken to the cockpit."

"...Maybe we should visit him while he's there?" Joe says. "You know, in case he gets lonely."

"In the cockpit?" Because really, that word gets funnier the more you say it.

"Sure. I'll distract the stewardesses while you rescue Patrick," Joe says, sounding very reasonable before adding, "You'd like that more anyway."

Pete shrugs, feeling the blanket underneath his shoulders. "I'm more the antihero type. Shades of grey, working from the shadows. Morally ambiguous gets you the hot heroine and the villainess."

"You're dragging him away from beautiful air hostesses. That's not morally ambiguous enough for you?"

After Joe hangs up, Pete wonders if he should call Patrick. It's an hour later in New York and Patrick's got his first day at the studios tomorrow, so he decides not to and feels very virtuous for almost twenty minutes, before he wonders if Patrick's even in or if his new roommate's dragged him out somewhere.

He punches the pillow a few times, trying to get comfortable, and goes to sleep.

 

 

There's a party on Thursday, a fuck-school-tomorrow thing. It's actually pretty awesome-- good music, good mix of people, and Pete doesn't actually know the host so he feels no guilt about how trashed the house looks after. Pete hooks Joe up with a pretty, preppy girl by talking up the guitar thing while Joe protests that he's not that good, really, he just loves music so much. The girl looks sceptical of his act, but Pete leaves them making out on the couch. His good deed done for the day. He talks music with some guy who says he knows him from somewhere, but can't remember any details, beats two cheerleaders in a who-can-scream-the-loudest contest before getting taken down by the third. They fool around in the kitchen for a while, but he doesn't protest when she pushes him off before he gets her top off. She writes her phone number on the back of his hand.

"Pete!" Someone slaps their hands down on his shoulders and he's turned around. "I haven't seen you in ages," William Beckett says.

Bill Beckett is too pretty for his own good, and every time Pete sees him, he's surprised they haven't fucked more. They've hooked up a few times, but nothing more. Maybe that means something, or maybe it's another sign that Pete should not be allowed to choose his own dates, because he obviously sucks at that.

"Yeah, I've been busy," Pete says, yelling a little over the music.

William grabs his hand and holds it up, reading the number. "So I see. Tanya, huh?"

Pete's not actually sure she told him her name, but she looked like a Tanya, he guesses. He shrugs, but doesn't pull his hand back and William rubs his thumb over the numbers. He's got good hands and familiar calluses from his guitar and Pete thinks there are worse kinks to have.

"Good party," Pete says, nodding at the rest of the house.

"Yeah. Wanna get out?" William's smile shows his teeth and Pete pulls his hand over, quick check for company and then kisses him. Pete's honed his fuck-you attitude enough, had enough fights that got nasty to pretty much get away with kissing semi-random guys in public and going further in private, but he's not sure about Bill.

Pete likes kissing people he knows, likes feeling that knowing what they like gives him a little edge. William's just impatient enough to make Pete the same, hands under T-shirts, pulling him in. He tastes a little of beer, not enough to be off-putting and he kisses like he's already got them in bed and naked.

"Wait, we should--"

William pulls back. "Bedrooms filled up like, five minutes after the party started. Your place?"

Pete flinches at the thought of William back home, this late on a school night. His parents might not say anything, but they'd know and he'd know they knew and-- "Got a friend's place, he's out of town."

And part of him does feel a little guilty. Lending his bedroom to underage sex is probably not what Patrick had in mind when he gave Pete the keys, but really, what did Patrick expect when he gave the keys to him? It's not like Pete's known for being sensible about this kind of thing.

Plus, it's not like Patrick's going to walk in on them.

"He won't mind?" William says, and then goes back to kissing Pete before he can answer.

It's not far, a twenty minute walk that takes longer because of semi-discreet making out, and Pete's breathing hard by the time he gets there. It's odd, seeing the place look dark, knowing that Patrick's not there, and he hesitates outside the door. He's got the strangest urge to ring the bell.

William pushes up against him, Pete's back to his front and says, "Problem?" before biting at Pete's neck.

And that brings Pete back on course, shaking his head and leaning back in to him. William seems to get taller every time Pete sees him, but Pete never has to think about it because William just bends himself around Pete. He finds the keys and opens the door without looking.

They end up in Patrick's bedroom and Pete's honestly not even thinking about it until they get there, switch the light on and fall on the bed, and then he's distracted by William, by his hands and his mouth and the way he manages to wriggle out of his jeans. Pete lies on his back, hands behind his head and watches until William says, "Shouldn't you be stuffing dollars in to my G-string right now?" but not like he objects.

"Depends, how much for a lap dance?"

William climbs on the bed on his hands and knees until he's over Pete. He leans down to kiss Pete, but pulls away before he actually makes contact. "No touching the dancers," he says.

"Come on, baby. I'll make it worth your while," Pete says, lowering his voice, putting a lot of lech into his smile and his hand on Bill's waist, sliding them down to hips and then pulling him down.

"Really," Bill said, voice shaking just a little when Pete pushes up, rubs against him. "I'm not that kind of--" and then he gives up, kissing Pete like they were back at the party before sliding down his body. William's good at this and Pete likes the fact that he likes doing it, and then Bill hums this particular note and Pete thinks about Patrick without meaning to, because Bill's a singer too and it shows sometimes. He flashes back to walking in on Patrick and Faye, pictures Patrick walking in on him and William and--

In his bed, in Patrick's bed and Patrick seeing Pete like this, with William and that moment of _fuck, that's hot_ before he realises what he's thinking. Pete tangles his hands in William's hair, not pulling or anything, just feeling and William may kiss impatiently, but he does this like he could spend all night at it.

"You wanna...?" William says, taking his mouth off Pete. "Let me suck you off, and then can I fuck you?" He sounds this weird blend of polite and rough and it makes Pete think vague thoughts of prom night clichés and high school girlfriends.

"Sounds--wait, do you have--" William looks at him for a second and then they both scramble for the bedside tables, tipping out the drawers and Bill holds up a tube of wet triumphantly.

"I've got to thank your friend," he says, smiling wide at Pete.

"Patrick," Pete says, then kind of wishes he hadn't. It's weird, off key somehow, to be saying his name when he's in his bedroom, about to get fucked by Bill. "And yeah, let's never let that happen."

William follows the plan, sucking Pete off, opening him with his clever fingers and making him come with his mouth on him, his fingers stretching him open, then turning him over when he's boneless and relaxed so Pete has his head buried in the pillow when William fucks him. He takes his time with that too, and Pete thinks it's been too long since he didn't have to worry about someone walking in, his ride waiting for him, his parents overhearing. He gets to moan, just as loud as he wants and the sound of the bed creaking makes him grin.

He comes again, his hand on his dick, jerking himself off and finishing before William does, groaning into the pillow. The room smells of them, sex, but Pete can see Patrick's posters on the walls, a book he finished on the bedside cabinet. It's strange, being in here without Patrick, but less strange than it would be if he was alone. The sound of William's breathing evening out is good enough that Pete wonders if it's possible to get that in to a song. The rhythm of it maybe.

Patrick would know.

"Is it okay if I crash here?" William says.

Pete nods. "Yeah, just help me do the laundry tomorrow."

William smiles and it's a good example of why Pete actually, genuinely, really likes the guy, before William falls asleep. Pete follows him.

Pete wakes up to his phone and wonders what the hell made him think I'm A Believer would make a good ringtone. He feels around for his phone, normally on his bedside table. It's not there, and neither is the table, replaced by someone else's head.

"Hey," Bill says, sleepily put out. He raises his head a moment later. "Your pants are ringing."

"Gimme," Pete says. Bill shifts, finds Pete's jeans by the side of the bed and throws them at him.

Pete finds his phone and answers, eyes still closed.

"H'lo?"

"Pete? Is this a bad time?" Patrick says. "I wanted to get you before you had to leave for school. I can call back later."

Pete sits up and the movement makes Bill groan. Pete puts his hand over Bill's mouth before he can say anything, making Bill glare and lick the palm of his hand. Pete takes it back, gesturing at him to keep quiet before wiping it on the blankets. "No! I'm-- I'm awake, I'm up." He gets out of bed in case Patrick can hear where he is from his voice. "I'm happy you called, even if it is at--" he checks the phone-- "seven thirty in the morning. Seven thirty? Is that right?"

"I figured you'd be up, but if you're running late--"

"I'm good, really," Pete says, smiling without meaning too. He missed hearing Patrick. Emails are okay, but the last time Pete went this long without actually hearing Patrick's voice was after the thing with Danielle. "Sounds like you're having fun there. Are we gonna have to drag you kicking and screaming back to the wilds of Chicago?"

Patrick laughs and Pete's smile stretches wider. He's aware that Bill's woken up a little more and is on his side, watching him. Bill mouths "Patrick?" and smirks when Pete nods and gestures for him to keep quiet.

"It is good. I'm-- we're setting up for this live album thing at a club here, sort of a showcase deal for the label."

"Yeah?" Pete says, heading in to the kitchen. They pretty much cleared out Patrick's fridge, but there's water in the taps and coffee in the cupboard, so makes a cup for him and Bill, giving Bill Andy's usual "Murder is a dying art" mug.

He prods Patrick to keep talking and it's kind of like the first time he made him sing, that same feeling of wrapping Patrick's voice around himself.

"So what's happening with you? Anything interesting happen?" Patrick says when he runs out of things to say.

"You've been gone, like, a week," Pete points out.

"Lot can happen in a week," Patrick says.

"Not here," Pete says, taking the coffee in to William. William's already in the shower, so he leaves it perched on the sink and sits back down on the bed. He needs to wash the sheets. "Not like for you. You're making new friends there? Just remember, they're probably more scared of you then you are of them."

"That explains the cattle-prods," Patrick says. "So I've--" he's interrupted by someone in the background, a woman saying, "Patrick! We're gonna be late if you don't get your ass into gear." And he swears, then says, "Fuck, I've got to-- and I'm probably making you late, too. I didn't mean to talk this long, just wanted to call and-- yeah, I'm coming!"

"It's cool," Pete says, holding the phone a little too tightly. "It was just really good to hear you again, you know? And you can phone tonight, right?"

"Right," Patrick says. "Take care and tell Joe and Andy that-- gimme that back!" and then the phone goes dead. Pete holds it for a moment, listening to the dial tone, then snaps it shut.

"So that's Patrick?" William says, coming out of the bathroom in a towel. "He's your lead singer, right?" He's smiling like Pete's being cute or amusing or like he understands something Pete doesn't.

Pete nods. "You should hear us when he's back," he says. "We're pretty fucking amazing when we're on." And, because he can never resist saying this, he adds, "Patrick didn't even know he was a lead singer until I told him."

"Pretty big thing to miss," William says. "The standing out front and singing into a mike didn't tip him off?"

"He didn't know he could sing," Pete says. "He's got this voice and he was just-- he didn't get it, until I told him." He's working on sounding less smug when he says that, but he's obviously got a way to go.

"So does that make you Professor Higgins or Svengali?" William says. "Or that guy in that film with Barbra Streisand?"

"The phantom, only without the psychosis," Pete says, eyeing Bill. He hooks his hands in the towel and pulls him closer.

"But with the stalkery obsession and general possessiveness?" William says, looking down at Pete. His hands go over Pete's wrists, but he doesn't push them away. Just holds them lightly, his thumb stroking back and forth. The towel hides nothing and Pete wasn't really intending to go into school today anyway.

"I haven't slept with him or anything," Pete says distractedly. "He's Patrick." Which is a great answer, in that it's true and explains everything and means he doesn't have to go into specifics.

Bill looks at him for a moment, then shrugs. "Okay." He shifts his weight, moving a little closer and pulls the towel off.

"Subtle," Pete says.

"Famous for it."

Subtlety is overrated, Pete thinks.

 


	3. Fic: This story's going somewhere, bandom, RPS, non-gen 3/5

3/5

[Previous part](http://jamjar.livejournal.com/99908.html?mode=reply)  
There's a zip of pictures attached to Patrick's next email. Most of them are places, some of them are of Patrick with people, most of them from his work. Patrick looks happy in the ones he's in, sitting in a recording studio, sitting on the grass somewhere. Pete wonders who took those ones.

The website for Principle Uncertainty has a bunch of blogs attached, including one introducing their "shiny new intern" with a picture of Patrick, head tilted forwards so his hat covers most of his face. His first post talks about how nice everyone is - _It's New York, aren't you guys meant to be rude and obnoxious_ \- and gets one comment telling him to wait around and one comment telling him not to hide that pretty face.

Second post has pictures of a show, some band Pete doesn't recognise and some guy as short as Patrick hanging all over him. The guy's pretty, tattoos and the-world-can-fuck-off make-up, smiling at Patrick like he's his new best friend. The subtitle underneath says, "Everything Frank says is a lie" and the post tells the world to check out his band.

Pete's not entirely surprised when Patrick sends him an email, promising him a CD of the band, telling him how cool they are, how much he thinks Pete will like them. When he calls that evening, he makes Pete listen over the phone, tiny, tinny sound playing, then Patrick's voice saying, "You see?"

"Maybe it's the connection," Pete says.

"They're much better in person," Patrick tells him. "Kind of insane on-stage. You and Joe could take notes. Frank is--"

"Frank, is he the guy in your photos?" Pete says, interrupting him.

"That's the one."

"Kind of clingy?"

"I hadn't noticed. Maybe you desensitised me?"

"You should be careful," Pete says, smiling so Patrick can hear it in his voice. "He might get the wrong idea." He fiddles with his jeans, where the ink stains haven't come out in the wash.

"It's nice that you're so concerned for my virtue," Patrick says. If he was here, Pete could tell if that tone meant he was annoyed or joking.

"I'm just saying you don't want to lead him on. There you are, all friendly, letting him hang all over you, maybe you're rolling up your sleeves and letting him see your wrists. Next thing you know, he's got you in front of an Elvis preacher in Vegas, his mama on one end of the line telling you what pretty children you'll have."

"If I had a dime for every time that happened to me," Patrick says.

"Heartbreaker," Pete says. "Nah, I'm not worried. He's too young for you, right?"

"He's only a couple years younger," Patrick says. "Maybe he can be my summer fling?" Light, like he's joking, maybe. Pete can't tell, not without seeing him, and it's not like he's been gone that long or even that he's technically that far away, but it feels like he's on the other side of the world.

"But you like his band?"

"Yeah, they're--do you remember," Patrick says, sounding affectionate, "what you said to me that first practice?"

Pete blinks. "Uh, was it 'What the hell are you wearing?'"

"No, apart from that. You told me you and Joe were awesome, even if you sucked right then, you were still awesome on some higher level."

Pete laughs. "Wow, I was kind of full of it, wasn't I?"

"Still are, and that's why we love you." Pete wants Patrick there, wants to have the contact, the touch and smile that usually goes with that tone of voice. "That's what these guys are like. They're not awesome yet, except that they are, on some level. It's just-- it's good to listen to. Reminds me of you guys."

"I really fucking miss you," Pete says without meaning to. He think about hanging up the moment it's out of his mouth, but when you say something like that, you've just got to just suck it up and take the emo like a man. "Seriously, it's not the same here without you."

Patrick doesn't say anything for a while, but Pete can hear him breathing for what seems like hours before he says, "I miss you guys as well." Quiet, sincere.

Pete's fingertips dig in to the phone like he can touch Patrick through the plastic. "So as great as the opportunity is, and all the cool bands and pretty little guitarists there are in New York..." He trails off expectantly.

"Oh, fuck your fishing for compliments," Patrick says, laughing. "Yes, I still love you best."

"All I wanted to hear," Pete says.

 

 

Pete gets into a rhythm. School, parties, clubs --all easier to go to, without practice and rehearsal and the time he just spends hanging around Patrick's. He hooks up with Bill semi-regularly and makes vague plans about getting him to meet Patrick. He likes showing off Patrick and he can picture Bill's expression, the first time Patrick sings two lines and then starts talking about layering the sound.

He keeps up with Patrick's blog, gets into a minor squabble with someone named ShiningOver over grammar and stalking and posts anonymous comments that almost never make it past the filter. Someone, maybe Pete's parents for his own good, or Joe or his brother out of pure evil, tells Patrick that Pete was skipping school and even though Patrick was never militant about it when he was in Chicago, some how he thinks it's his fault if Pete doesn't go now.

Pete doesn't object to Patrick calling in the morning to check he's awake and heading to school. Pete gets used to it, getting dressed with his phone held between his head and his shoulder, eating breakfast with Patrick telling him to "At least hold the phone away when you chew, Pete, that's really disgusting." He likes it, hearing the differences in Patrick's voice, awake and excited over the rush of traffic. Croaky and tired and, "No, I'm not coming down with anything, they just used too much dry ice at the show yesterday and please, please stop sounding so much like my mother."

It's actually kind of nice like that, enough that Pete wonders if they can fake it on a song. Flawed, but personal. A waking up kind of voice, like how Pete imagines he'll sound in the morning when they're touring properly, waking up too early and singing too late, tired but good over breakfast and living in each other's pockets.

He knows he's romanticising it, because he's woken up with the guys often enough to know that Andy is a bitch when he's sleepy, that Patrick has to get in the shower before Joe or there are fights, that Pete's sense of humour is not always given the appreciation it deserves. Still, when he thinks about it, he's pretty much got it down as awesome.

He doesn't call Patrick every night. Maybe every other, which is what he tells Joe when he asks, and he doesn't mention that Patrick phones him first the rest of the time.

 

Pete's awake by seven most days, waiting for Patrick's morning call. When it's 7.45 and he hasn't, Pete calls Patrick's cell. It rings for a while before someone picks it up.

"Hello, you have reached the pocket of Patrick's pants. He's not in them right now, but--"

Pete doesn't recognise the voice. "So, uh, are you the new occupant?" he says. "Is Patrick there?"

"Lemme just wake him up," the guy says.

"If he's sleeping," Pete starts to say, then shuts up. If this guy wants to wake Patrick up when Patrick can hold a grudge about that for weeks, it's his look-out.

"I just got to find him, he's in here somewhere." The guy laughs. "Can't go far without his pants, right?"

"Depends what kind of company he keeps," Pete says. "Why doesn't he have his pants?" Which is, he thinks, a much better question than the one he really wanted to ask.

"I think I-- I'm pretty sure I confiscated them," the guy says. "Yeah, that sounds about right. Hey, are you Pete?"

"Yeah," Pete says, cautiously.

"Hey, it's the wife!" The guy yells to someone else. "Dude, tell Patrick he missed his--"

Pete can hear a muffled feminine, "I'm not a dude." Then, "Really? Hey, let me--"

"No, I've got it--" There's the sound of a brief fight that ends with someone groaning and a girl saying, bright and cheerful, "So you're Pete, huh?"

"I'm Patrick's Chicago wife," Pete says, pushing through humiliating to funny. "He keeps me barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen," he says.

"Funny, he keeps his New York wife pregnant, barefoot and in the bedroom."

"We've been together a while," Pete says. "The romance is dead. Sex is still fantastic, though."

"In the kitchen? That's just not hygienic."

"Patrick has his kinks," Pete says, thinking about the first time he saw Faye. "Hey, just get him to call me back or something when he wakes up? He's kind of a bitch if someone wakes him up before he's ready."

"Yeah," she says. "But he's so gosh darned cute when he's in a mood, right?"

Pete misses Patrick right then, enough that he wants to say fuck it and tell her to go ahead and wake him up, but--

\--Patrick's been working hard, and he probably needs the sleep more than he needs to talk to Pete. And he's obviously not lonely, not with people who he's comfortable enough with to let them steal his pants and Pete's not that selfish, whatever everyone says.

"Yeah, it's cool," he says.

"'Kay, I'll tell him when he wakes up. So Pete, any little tales you can tell us about Mr Stump?" She says. "Any dark secrets you want to share with the--"

Pete fakes nervous laughter and hangs up.

 

 

Pete's in kind of a bad mood that weekend. He leaves his phone at home when he goes to the party, so he's not expecting Joe to be there. Bill isn't, so Pete hooks up with a pretty girl with goth-red hair and a "Nobody knows I'm a lesbian" T-shirt. He likes the irony and she's pretty hot. He thinks about how he's going to tell Patrick about this, a voice over in the background describing her breasts, her hands, how she sounded when he went down on her. Picturing Patrick sounding embarrassed the more details Pete brings up, so Pete teases him by telling him more details. Patrick doesn't usually go red, but he gets flustered enough that it doesn't matter.

It kind of pushes him to go a little bit more with her, show off more than with the usual casual party hook-up. It's good, because sex pretty much is, but he doesn't feel any more relaxed after, just wired. He goes along with a bunch of people to a club and starts a fight with the first random stranger to call him a cocksucker like it's a bad thing.

He rides the high from that all the way home, ducking his dad so he doesn't see the damage, so he doesn't have to feel guilty at making them worry, checks the time and thinks about phoning Patrick. Waking him up, maybe, and Patrick probably has plans, maybe has company, and Patrick hates being woken up early and Pete's in just the kind of mood to find that funny.

Patrick answers on the first ring which Pete wasn't expecting and says, "Did I miss our anniversary again?"

Pete blinks, but recovers quickly. "My mama warned me about guys like you. She always said you were too old for me."

"Your mother loves me," Patrick says. It's true, Pete's mother has a disturbingly high regard for Patrick and Andy, which Pete likes to ignore except for when he's taking advantage of it.

"So I'm your child bride now? 'Cause I've got to say, the honeymoon was all kind of a blur. I'm thinking of getting an annulment." He checks the clock. "It's-- fuck, is it three o'clock there? Why are you awake?"

"Did you want me to be asleep?" Patrick says. "You're a mean, mean, petty boy."

"Fuck you," Pete says. "I'm a vicious and vengeful man."

"Greedy little brat."

"Fearsome and mighty god. Look upon my works and tremble," Pete says, settling on the bed. "Seriously, shouldn't you be sleeping?"

"Same to you," Patrick says. "I was working."

"What kind of work are you doing at three in the morning?" Pete says. He can't hear anything in the background, no music or people talking. "Or does knowing make me an accessory?" He lowers his voice to a stage-whisper. "Come home, Patrick, I'll send you a ticket. You don't have to live like that, selling yourself on the streets of New York..."

"My life is so much more interesting when you're narrating it," Patrick says. "Actually, you can-- listen to this, okay?" There's the sound of him putting his cell phone down, and then a burst of music, tinny through the phoneline but clear enough for Pete to hear. Patrick picks up the phone again. "I'm allowed to use the equipment on my own time so I'm just doing a little production work for Gabe's band. They're between labels right now, so I was-- Does that sound right to you? The bassline, because I was thinking about emphasising it a little more, but--"

Pete pokes at a sore spot on his arm as Patrick talks, wondering if it'll bruise, how much it'll show. He loves listening to Patrick talk about music and he can almost see him, playing chords and imaginary drums or keyboards as he explains about moving this bit further up there, like that, coming in on that bit with a ba-dam-ba instead of a ba-dam-dam. Patrick's learning new stuff, working hard and Pete's mind drifts, like Patrick is a hawk, flying about and picking up rabbits and then coming back to Pete's wrist with a belt full of new, useful talents for him.

If you love something, he thinks. Patrick on the phone sometimes sounds lightyears away, but sometimes --now--, it's like he's right there and talking into Pete's ear. He's not sure when he falls asleep, but he's pretty sure Patrick's still talking when he does.

 

 

The next day, hunger trumps potential guilt trips and he goes downstairs for breakfast to make sure he gets his fair share of the waffles. He shrugs off his parents questions with a general, "It's not like I was in any danger, I was with friends." And hazes over which friends they were. His dad casually states that Pete won’t be staying out that late for at least two weeks and Pete shrugs and accepts it. Not like he had anything planned anyway.

His mom adds something about how much she'll enjoy having him home, helping around the house, straight after school and at the weekends and she doesn't say the word grounding either, but it's pretty clear. Pete looks up over his waffle --maple syrup as god intended, not the strawberry syrup and honey blasphemy of his brother-- and says, "But I can still go to practice, right? It's not fair on Joe and Andy if I skip."

There's meaningful eye-contact, but it ends with his dad saying, "I suppose we should encourage that kind of hard work."

Pete grins and then grins wider when he catches his brother rolling his eyes. "It's for the band," he says. "I'm all about self-sacrifice."

"Pete," his mother says. He listens to the warning and shuts up, smiling.

Andy gives him a lift to practice and Pete spends ten minutes looking at his arms. Pete wants tattoos like that-- not those ones exactly, because copying tats is just lame, but that kind of thing. It's not that he regrets his, exactly, just that in retrospect, they were pretty fucking stupid. At least his ankle has a prison-tattoo thing going for it, his back just kind of sucks, especially when he's got Andy's for comparison.

He looks at his arms, holding his hands out and pictures them decorated. It makes him think of Danielle, of her drawing on his arm, but he pushes that out and replaces it with the image of a tattoo parlour, Andy's advice, words and specific images instead of her abstract, spiralling artwork.

"Nightmare before Christmas, lame or cool?" he says. Andy looks over and Pete holds up his right arm as an explanation.

Andy actually thinks about it, which is one of the reasons Andy is also pretty cool. "Cool," he says, "As long as you embrace it, get it done right."

Pete nods and thinks about Sally, Jack, pumpkins and bones. Maybe something for the band, something that says all of them. Or something for himself, like he's branding himself as his own. Property of Pete Wentz.

Maybe he can persuade his parents to go with him, if Andy knows a good place in Wisconsin or some place they can go for his birthday.

They pull in and Joe's waiting outside, leaning against the door. Pete unlocks it. He should give Joe a copy of the key, but he's vaguely worried about Joe using Patrick's place like he does.

"I'm gonna make some coffee," Andy says. "You want some?"

"No milk," Pete warns. "No soya stuff either."

"Black coffee, sign of manliness," Andy says. "He's got sugar, right?"

Pete nods and finds it in the cupboard while Joe gets the mugs out, putting four on the kitchen surface before remembering. Andy makes the coffee, starts to pour it and frowns. "Where's my cup?"

Joe shrugs and Pete rolls his eyes. "You're so persnickety. You're like my grandma."

"I'm not persnickety," Andy says, still frowning at the mugs. "I just like my coffee in my mug. It's mine."

"You're kind of anal," Pete tells him. "And not in the good way."

Andy's smile is sudden and wide. "You don't know me well enough to say that."

Pete raises his eyebrows and opens his mouth before Joe interrupts with a, "Why does every conversation come back to anal sex with us?"

"Just lucky?" Pete suggests.

"I miss Patrick," Joe says. "At least then, we'd talk about music. Or blow-jobs. Your cup's on the sink." He points behind Andy.

Andy pours a cup and Pete makes a note to mock him about his obvious relief. It's a pretty good practice, as Patrickless practices go and Pete's in a good mood after. Andy's on the phone to someone about one of his outside bands and Joe and Pete lean against the side of his van and wait for him to finish. Pete closes his eyes to feel the sun, warm and red against his eyelids and smiling up at it until he hears Joe's amused little huff, like an audible smirk.

"What?" He says, opening one eye enough to see him.

"You talk to Patrick today?" Joe says.

Pete shrugs. "Last night, this morning."

"That explains the good mood," Joe says. "You got your Patrick fix." He holds his hands wide, pacifying. "Hey, I'm not judging. I indulge in a little Patrick myself sometimes. Email, mostly, because if I try talking to him before school or in the evening, his phone's usually busy. Must be making a lot of friends, right?"

"Right," Pete says, and he's normally much better at lying than this, but it's kind of not worth it with Joe. Not worth the effort of trying, and he's too content right now with the sun on his face and one hand still absently picking out chords to even bother.

Joe looks at him, then says, "Pete, are you-- You're kind of clingy, you know? I mean, generally, you are, but also especially."

Pete gives a "Yeah, and?" shrug.

"You and Patrick..." Joe says. "I know you hook up with a lot of people, so I just--"

"It's not--" Pete starts to say. "Me and Patrick, it's not like--" And then he has to figure out the end of that sentence and can't, so he tries again. "We're not, you know. It's just me, I have a-- It's just a thing."

"Just a thing," Joe says. "Not a thing, thing. Just a thing, right?"

"Right," Pete says. "I'm not going to lose my mind over it and Patrick, it's not like he even knows. I just have this--" and he can't say thing again, that sounds stupid and juvenile, so he makes a vague sketch in the air, "--but I'm not like-- it's not like with Danielle or anything. I've got it under control."

"Yeah, because it's not like you're phoning him twice a day or stalking his friends or sleeping in his bed, right?" Joe says. "Because you know, anyone else and that would probably mean it wasn't just a thing, but a major obsession. Since it's you..." He shrugs. "You get kind of focussed sometimes. Addictive personality or something."

Pete grins, hunches down and tries to look as shifty as he can, nervous junkie. "I can quit any time!" he says. "I only do Patrick recreationally."

"Dude, 'do Patrick,'" Joe says, cracking up like he's twelve.

"You have a dirty mind, Joseph Trohman. A dirty, dirty mind." Pete shakes his head in mock-disappointment.

"So recreational, does that mean you suck but you don't in--"

Pete thinks the world owes him for covering Joe's mouth with his hand before he can finish that sentence, especially when Joe licks it right after.

 

 

 

It goes from being weeks, months, *years* until Patrick gets back to being a week away, which means that Pete spends most of that week running around and sorting stuff out. Making sure Andy knows when Patrick's flight lands so he can drive them all to pick him up, working out bus and train routes in case the van breaks down, replacing the plants Pete killed from over-watering, making sure everything in Patrick's place is clean and, at his mum's suggestion, getting a few basics in -milk, bread, frozen pizza- so Patrick doesn't come home to an empty fridge.

He's bracing himself for delays, for the plane being late or Patrick missing it, so he's really not prepared when it lands fifteen minutes early and Patrick's one of the first off, coming off the plane while they're still running to the gate. They rush him at the same time and Pete wins first go by jumping over the seats when Joe has to go around, and then he's jumping on Patrick, making him stagger back and almost drop his laptop case. It's mostly that Joe and Andy get there in time to prop him up that stops Pete from actually knocking Patrick over.

He rubs his nose into Patrick's jacket and just enjoys it, Patrick hugging him, Joe and Andy hugging both of them, until Patrick says, "At some point, I will need to breathe."

"That's a myth," Pete says, but he relaxes his hold enough that he can lean back and-- "dude, your face!"

"What?" Patrick blinks, then puts one hand up to touch the outline of a black eye and winces. "Oh, yeah, that."

"You never said anything!" Pete says, channelling his mother.

"It's not--" Patrick pauses, then looks at Pete. "I don't know if I should tell you."

"What? You're in New York six weeks and you start keeping secrets from me?" Pete puts on puppy-dog eyes and tries to look hurt. It's not entirely successful, because his mouth keeps smiling, wide and dorky and it's a good thing he's way, way past the point where being even the littlest bit cool matters in front of these guys.

"Seriously," Andy says. "If you wanted to get beaten up, we could have done that for you here. I would have personally punched you out, you didn't have to go out of state for that."

"I wasn't beaten up, it was... yeah, I really don't think I should be talking about this in front of the kids. They might get ideas."

Pete and Joe exchange looks and then Joe says, "You know that nothing you say is ever gonna be worse than what we're thinking right now?"

Pete nods. "There are cops and handcuffs and 7 foot tall women named Lola in my head right now."

Patrick smiles and shakes his head. "Nothing like that. Okay, the truth is, Gabe was showing off with his guitar, spinning it around him, and he kind of lost control and it hit me in the eye."

Pete folds his arms and raises a suspicious eyebrow. "That's what you didn't want us to hear? That's pretty weak."

"Pete, look at me. Tell me you're not thinking, right now, how cool it'd look."

Pete meets his eyes for about three seconds before he starts laughing. Patrick shakes his head and looks at Andy. "See? Ideas."

 

 

There's a party, which is mostly to welcome Patrick home, but also a pre-birthday thing for Pete. It's at Andy's on the basis that he's moving out of his place at the end of the month. They play a couple of songs while they wait for people to arrive, more like a mini-practice than anything else. Pete listens for differences, and there are some -Patrick holding notes a little longer, a little shorter, breaking off to talk about maybe changing this bit around- but the feel is as good as it ever was. Pete thinks dumb, clichéd thoughts about loving things and setting them free and tries to feel embarrassed about them instead of *smug*.

There are people Pete knows and he keeps introducing Patrick to them, showing him off. Someone has to, since Patrick kind of sucks at doing that for himself. He tries to make sure that Patrick meets the best people. It's bizarre, how many people there are that Pete knows that have never met Patrick or Andy. The guys are just-- they're there, part of Pete's life, and it's like people are only now going, "Oh hey, you have an extra head! Where have you been hiding that?"

They know that Pete's in a band, some of them have seen him play with the guys, but they've never actually talked to them and it really hadn't even occurred to Pete that people who knew him wouldn't have.

Patrick introduces him to his friends. Pete knows some of them from the scene, a couple of them pretty well, but there are a few strangers. Some poli-sci & media studies chick who tells Pete that she met him freshman year and "tried to get him to let me tape him kissing people naked, but he wouldn't even let me take a Polaroid."

"She told me it was for media studies," Patrick said. "A commentary on prejudice, love and beauty."

"You didn't fall for it?"

"Nah, too damn suspicious." She hugs Patrick, then says, "Hey, is Andy here? Because I heard he got new ink done, and I've got to see some skin." She heads off and leaves Pete looking at Patrick, one eyebrow raised.

"Interesting friends you have."

"She's offered to do our music videos," Patrick says. "But she's kind of-- poli-sci and media studies, it's all porn and propaganda."

Pete grins at him. "And that's bad?"

Patrick tries to ruffle his hair but Pete's hair gel triumphs. "She'd have us all thrown in prison for getting your and Joe's jailbait naked bodies on MTV."

"One month and I'm legal," Pete says. He steals a kiss, joking and quick on Patrick's mouth before he can blink, and says, "Maybe I should get all my illicit sex in while I still can?"

"You're not bored with that stuff yet?"

Pete smiles at Patrick's faked look of disbelief and lets Patrick back away a little. "Sex gets boring? You really must lose it after eighteen."

"Sure it's fun, but have you ever tried doing your taxes? Applying for a grant? Signing a lease?" Patrick sighs and looks heavenward, exaggerated afterglow. "You never forget your first rental agreement."

That girl's cool, and so is the big guy that Patrick knows from Mythology 101 who does security in his part-time. Patrick knows good people, mostly, and some of them aren't exactly to Pete's taste, but a lot of them are exactly the kind of people Patrick should have as friends. There are a couple of people that he doesn't click with, the ones that give Pete this look when Patrick introduces him. It's not mean, exactly, just kind of dismissive. The kind of look that, in a club, would have Pete clenching his hands in to fists, throwing a punch or dragging them on to the dance floor. Playing faster, screaming louder if he was on stage.

He can't exactly do that here, not when they're Patrick's friends, so he just leans on Patrick a little more when one guy says, "So you're in high school, right?" and shows his teeth when he smiles. It's not even about the way they treat him, because he's sixteen, he's used to "you're just young," and "when you're older," it's the way they act like him and Patrick, like the band, is just a joke or Patrick being kind.

It's only a few people, because most of Patrick's friends are cool, and it's easily trumped by Patrick's, "This is Pete, my bassist, the guy I told you about." "Pete's the guy that makes me get in front of people and sing." And, "Joe and Pete were already playing together when they got me and Andy to join."

It's a rush and it's calming and Pete feels right, like he hasn't done in a while. Part of him wants to do something, dance, play, something, and part of him just wants to stay here like this. It's exactly the sort of moment, he thinks, when the obvious thing, sex or not even that, just making out, would be perfect.

Seventeen in a month, Pete thinks, and that might make a difference. He finds a couch and pulls Patrick down on it, so Patrick's sitting in the corner and Pete's at the other end, his legs swung over Patrick's lap, toeing his shoes off and leaning back. A familiar shape, tall and skinny, floats into view.

"Bill!" he says. "Over here."

He straightens up a little, pulling himself upright using the sofa couch and ignoring Patrick's oof when it makes Pete's heels dig in too hard. "You made it, then?"

"I think so," Bill says.

Patrick smiles and waves an introduction. "Bill Beckett, Patrick Stump."

Bill holds his hand out for Patrick to shake, polite as any one could like. "You're Pete's Patrick?"

Pete grins and slings his arm across Patrick. "My very own."

Bill's smile is pretty, a little sly, but mostly pretty. Pete wonders if he's drunk, but downgrades it to tipsy when Bill says, "It's just, from the way Pete talks about you, I was expecting you to be seven foot tall and made of gold. With, like, Shiva-arms, guitar in one hand, microphone in the other, keyboard in the third and fourth and an extra set fiddling with the sound board."

"Sorry to disappoint you," Patrick says. He holds out his hands. "Just the two."

Bill shrugs. "It's okay, they're nice hands anyway." He looks at Pete and raises an eyebrow, like he's asking Pete a question. Pete's not sure what he's asking, so he just shrugs. "Are you guys going to play later? Someone said I missed it, being fashionably late."

"You didn't miss much. We haven't practiced in weeks," Patrick says. "We were kind of a mess."

"And yet, we still rocked," Pete says. "We're pretty fucking miraculous that way."

"That's the kind of thing that gets me interested," Bill says. "Pete's kind of got me curious about you. He talks about you a lot."

"That's, uh. Nice of him?" Patrick says, like he's not quite sure that's true. "Pete may be a little biased."

"Pete knows a good thing when he sees it," Pete says.

Bill sits down on the arm of the couch on the other side of Patrick and reaches down to grab his hat. Patrick slams a hand on it before he can, keeping it on there as he tilts his head up to look at Bill. "No," he says, firm as Pete's mom with a puppy.

Bill makes another grab and Patrick jerks back, falling on to Pete and Bill slides down into the new space. There's only just enough room for him, and he slings his arm across the back of the couch, behind Patrick, crossing over Pete's. "So I sing too, and play guitar, but I don't know, because I like playing guitar, but sometimes it's kind of distracting when I'm singing. You get that? Because I'm thinking about the words and audience and connecting and sometimes I lose track of what I'm doing." Bill shrugs and he's stroking Pete's forearm, lightly, probably not even aware he's doing it. "I just don't want it to be a barrier between me and the audience. How do you deal with that?"

"I like the barrier," Patrick says. "It's-- we tried a couple of times, just me singing and I--"

"You pretty much hated it," Pete says.

"I didn't-- hate is kind of-- it just wasn't comfortable, you know? Being the centre of attention like that."

"Yeah?" Bill says with polite lack of comprehension. "I guess that would be-- uh, so you felt kind of exposed?"

"Naked without an instrument," Patrick says. "And no-one wants to see me naked under a spotlight."

"Dude, you underestimate our fanbase."

"Our fanbase is about ten guys and your parents."

"Yeah, but those ten guys?" Pete grins.

"Is it different if you have another singer on stage?" Bill says, leaning in to Patrick a little. His hand strokes along Pete's arm, his wrist and tangles his fingers in Pete. "Maybe a duet or something. Or back-up." He makes a face. "I'm kind of between bands and if don't get to sing with someone soon, I'm gonna go crazy. I tried doing the solo thing, but you kind of need people, you know?"

He looks at Patrick again, managing to look up through his lashes even though he's about a foot taller, and his thumb brushes across Pete's wrist and Pete's turned on and trying not to laugh, because Bill really, really fails utterly at subtlety.

"Music, like pretty much everything, is better when you do it with other people," Bill says. He sounds sincere, edging on to deep and meaningful, and Pete has a moment where he thinks, "He's only sixteen," which is stupid, because it's not like Pete's much older, and he knows Bill isn't exactly sweet sixteen and never been kissed, kicked or caught in public with something better left private.

He wonders if this is how Patrick feels, looking at him. He leans his head against Patrick's shoulder, shuffles in a little closer, and finds where Patrick's T-shirt ends and he can just put his hand flat against Patrick's stomach. He doesn't mean anything special by it except that he likes touching him and that he hasn't quite got over six weeks without him, and he's careful not to press so lightly that it tickles and to keep the rest of his body from pressing against him. Patrick's good at ignoring when Pete's hard, jokes about teenage hormones aside -like he's that much older- but Pete's got used to not pressing too much. It makes it easier to get away with things like this.

And it's not that he's forgotten about Bill, because Bill's leg is touching his, even with Patrick in the middle, his thumb is stroking Pete's skin. It's just that he didn't really think what this might look like to him. Bill's obviously taking it as permission or agreement or something, because he smiles and shifts position, turning more on to his side and bringing his leg up a little, so he's pretty much pressed against Patrick's side and one leg is crossing over Patrick's. Patrick moves back, automatically trying to make room, before coming up against Pete on the other side and stopping. Pete has his hand on Patrick's stomach, so he can feel when he tenses. He relaxes, but Pete knows when Patrick's forcing himself not to tense.

"Yeah, I like working with people," he says, and his voice is light, almost perfect. "I've been in bands pretty much since I first picked up a set of drumsticks. Not really the lone wolf type."

"I'm the same," Bill says. "I just wasn't built to live in isolation. I need people, connection, you know? Especially with music. You've got to be around people with the same language sometimes. So you started out on drums?" He picks up Patrick's hand and looks at it like he's checking for calluses. "Does that give you a different perspective? Like, you're more aware of the rhythm, even when you're doing the melody?"

"Sometimes you pick up one more than the other, but I think that's true with everyone," Patrick says. He's casual, like he doesn't get what Bill's doing, but Pete knows Patrick well enough to know that it's deliberate. He knows the difference between Patrick Not Getting It and *really* not getting it. Deliberate and cheerful attempt at shutting Bill down without ever having to acknowledge the attempt. Patrick pulls his hand out and puts it on his thigh, which might be a mistake because Bill follows it there.

Patrick's smile is kind of uncomfortable, but still trying for "I have no idea what you're doing, that's how much I don't think of you that way." Pete's seen it in action a couple of times and it normally works, but not right now. Bill just looks like he thinks Patrick really doesn't get it, like he's just not seeing it instead of refusing to see it. Bill's not good at subtleties or not used to being put off. Either way, he's leaning on Patrick and it's funny if you know Patrick well enough to know that he's trying not to freak out.

He can see Bill's hand inching up Patrick's thigh and -- yeah, Pete should be nice to Patrick since he only just got him back. He pinches the back of Bill's hand and says, "Can I borrow you for a second?" when Bill looks up, getting to his feet and dragging him off to the kitchen.

"What?" Bill says, rubbing the back of his hand.

"You need to stop hitting on Patrick," Pete says, leaning back on a cupboard.

"Why?" Like he honestly can't see any reason why that would be a problem, and Pete can sympathise with him, really, but...

"Because he doesn't want you to," he says.

"What?" Bill says. "What's the problem?"

"Patrick has this--" not thing "--this policy, where he doesn't fuck around with people our age."

"What, ever?"

"Yeah. So you need to stop before he starts feeling like a dirty old man."

Bill folds his arms and looks at Pete. "Right. And this isn't just you warning me off. It's not like I'm trying to steal your vocalist, Pete. I just want to borrow him for a bit, and you're welcome to watch or join in or whatever."

"I said we didn't fuck," Pete says.

"You just said you never had, which means yet," Bill corrects. "I didn't get that it was like, something you didn't do."

"Right," Pete says. "Like some people don't drink, some people don't smoke. I don't have sex with Patrick."

"Right," Bill says. "I didn't realise it was a thing."

"It's not," Pete says. "It's Patrick, and he has his boundaries or whatever, and you're pushing them so stop. He doesn't like it."

"He doesn't like it." Bill holds up a hand. "Seriously, Pete, if I'm stepping on your toes--"

"Hey, I'm all for Patrick getting laid," Pete says, then lowers his voice when he realises how loud that came out. "Seriously, no-one is more pro that than me. I like it when good things happen to my friends." Bill opens his mouth to say something and Pete talks faster before he can. "Just-- think of it like he has a girlfriend already or something? It's not that he doesn't think you're..." He gestures at Bill, because Bill knows how good he looks, but likes it when you say it too. "But he's gonna make a point of not noticing, because he thinks he shouldn't. Right?"

Bill looks at him, obviously trying to judge Pete's sincerity and Pete tries to look honest even though he knows it makes him look like he's faking it the more sincere he actually is. "But it's not like he's *old*," Bill says, and Pete relaxes. Bill sounds like he believes Pete, he just doesn't get it. "And I want to."

"He just has a thing about it. I don't get it either," Pete says, "I just have to accept it, like... like Andy and cheese. Vegan, doesn't eat it," he adds off of Bill's look.

Bill frowns, pouts a little. It's not deliberate, which makes it kind of cute. "That sucks. Or doesn't, whatever."

Pete hooks a hand on his shoulder sympathetically. "Yeah, I know. Hey, big party, lots of other people if you're looking to hook up." And he's not really thinking about it because it might interfere with his plan to glue himself to Patrick's side all night, but Bill is there and he looks good, and Pete presses himself along his side, rubbing his thumb where Bill's shoulder joins his neck.

"Mmm." Bill looks at him, smiles a little, then says, "Maybe we can just go back and talk. He's kind of good to listen to anyway." His smile widens. "I'll just think of him as the Venus de Milo or something, or an original vinyl of Electric Ladyland. Just appreciate the beauty."

Pete grins, because that works. He likes it when people like Patrick, when they appreciate him, so he grabs a bag of chips to have an excuse for coming in here and heads back out.

Someone's taken their space on the couch and Patrick's turned to face her, one knee resting on the seat, leaning in. Pete doesn't recognise the girl, but he recognises her body language, the tilt of her head, the way she's leaning in. Bill makes a little sound of disappointment and Pete thinks she doesn't look like Faye particularly, but Patrick's leaning in too, and there, he makes a vague gesture and when he drops his hand on the back of the sofa, it's kind of touching hers.

For a moment it's like there are two Petes and one of them's thinking, Hey, good for Patrick, because the girl is hot, college-cool with an afro and glasses that look pretty much identical to Patrick's, and Patrick should get that, Pete likes thinking about Patrick moving on (moving up) from Faye and hooking up with cool (hot) people that don't make him feel like a dirty old man.

The other Pete isn't really thinking anything, except that Patrick's leaning in to her and she's sitting in Pete's place on the couch and he's looking at her and she's touching his hand and she's sitting in Pete's place and Patrick looks okay with that.

"Aw," Bill says from behind Pete, bringing him back to himself. "I think we've been replaced."

"He doesn't even know her," Pete says, and wonders if that's true. He hasn't seen her before, but that doesn't mean anything. Patrick knows a lot of people Pete's never met. He walks up behind them and clears his throat. "Hey," he says.

Patrick looks up and he and the girl kind of lean away in a way that makes it obvious that they were leaning in a second before. "Pete," he says, sounding kind of surprised. "I thought--" Pete can see Patrick's quick glance at Bill, the slight embarrassment and oh. Not an unreasonable assumption, not when Pete practically dragged Bill off, but seriously, does Patrick think Pete would just abandon him on his welcome home party to hook up?

"Just getting supplies," he says, holding up the chips in explanation. "I leave you alone for five minutes..." He shakes his head. "This is why I keep telling you we need a bodyguard."

"Yeah, if you didn't keep picking fights with the headliners..." Patrick says, rolling his eyes. "Seriously, we need them to protect your ass, not my virtue. Wait, that didn't come out right."

Pete's laugh is dirty because accidental innuendo is the best kind. He smiles at the girl and she really is pretty, nice wide smile back at him. Patrick finds his manners and says, "Oh! This is Sara. She's a friend of Andy's."

"We used to abuse the same employee discount," she says. She's smiling and friendly, but her body's still turning towards Patrick and she's not opening up the space between them. Pete's kind of tempted to drop in between them anyway. It'd be kind of rude to just sit between them, but kind of funny as well, the way messing with your friends always is.

Bill's hands are on Pete's shoulders and his voice is cheerful in Pete's ear and he says, "You two kids have fun!" And he steers Pete away.

"What?" Pete says

Bill looks at him and rolls his eyes. "You can't think of anything more fun to do than cockblock your friend?"

Pete hesitates, thinking about it.

"You have warped priorities, Wentz."

"Part of my charm?"

"Yeah, you just keep telling yourself that," Bill says. He shrugs then adds, faux-causal, "Also, you're kind of in love with Patrick."

"You're like the second person to tell me that this week," Pete says. "I don't see what the big deal is. You're halfway there and you've only known him for like, five minutes."

"I'm not that easy," Bill says. "I just wanted to blow him. You're thinking marriage, a house with a studio, 2.5 kids and a puppy."

"Four bedrooms and a big kitchen," Pete says. He pats Bill on the shoulder. "You'll understand when you settle down with a real band of your own."

Bill pouts. "I want to make the commitment, it's just so hard to find someone that feels the same way."

"I hear Mike's band broke up again," Pete says. "Maybe you can catch him on the rebound?"

"Because that always works so well," Bill says. Then, "Yeah, maybe."

[Next part](http://jamjar.livejournal.com/100587.html)


	4. Fic: This story's going somewhere, bandom, RPS, non-gen 4/5

  
[Previous part](http://jamjar.livejournal.com/100181.html)  
It's different with the band after Patrick gets back. Andy stops flirting with quite so many bands (and the fact that Pete and Joe followed him around to all his other rehearsals and shows and made sad Oliver Twist faces through windows and backstage had nothing to do with this) and Patrick gets pushier about pretty much everything. Music, but also Pete and Joe's school stuff because "I have plans for this summer and they do not involve you two going to summer school."

Pete spends most of the next month talking his parents into letting him drop soccer and then spend two months in a van with two strange men and Joe. Soccer is hard, since it means dropping the possibility of scholarships, but he uses the argument that if spending the summer in a van with the guys doesn't put him off music as a career then he'll start playing again in the fall.

That only works because he gets them to agree to the tour by the cunning use of Patrick and Andy. For reasons Pete's not quite sure he understands, his parents seem to be working on the theory that Andy is a mature, sensible young man, who may or may not rescue injured puppies in his spare time between balancing taxes and paying rent the week before it's due. He's not quite sure how they came to this conclusion, but he's willing to work with it. The tattoos, piercings and occasional statement that the world will probably be better off post Armageddon "Except for us, of course" don't seem to shake this belief one bit.

Less surprising is the fact that Patrick's mother may have to rescue him from the Wentz household one day. He's pretty sure his mom is trying to adopt him by stealth and he obviously gets his general inability to say no to Patrick from them. When he cleverly gets Patrick to ask them for permission to take their favourite eldest son to strange places for a month, neither of them actually manage to look at him when they're trying to find reasons why it's a bad idea.

"It's not that we don't think the band is good for him," Pete's dad says. "It's been great for him, and we appreciate you and Andy spending so much time with the boys."

"Really, we're just happy that we got the chance," Patrick says, his hands around the mug of coffee they insisted he drink, open pack of cookies in front of him. "This is for us, you know? It's-- sorry, Pete-- but you know, it's not like this is a gift for you, we want this for ourselves. I want this." He smiles at them, looking vaguely guilty at the confession and Pete tries to beam "Give him everything he wants!" into his parents' brains. He can tell that his mom is only not looking at Patrick so she won't crumble, and yeah, definitely one of his better ideas to get Patrick here to do the negotiating for him.

"I promise Andy and I won't let Pete do anything-- uh, we'll try really hard to stop Pete from doing anything any more stupid or dangerous than he'd do at home." He dodges Pete's kick so it only just connects and Pete's mom gives out a little huffed laugh and looks at his dad and that, right there, is the moment they give in.

Andy sells his van and gets one with the seats ripped out and spends several hours trying to work out the best way to pack it. Pete leaves him with his delusion that the relatively neat storage will last longer than it takes to get out of Pete's driveway and goes back to listening to Patrick discuss the itinerary with his parents and looking up tattoo designs on line. He should have something, something to celebrate that's cool and rockstar and at least 20% as awesome as Andy's back.

The van is-- well, it'll get them places. Probably. It managed to be cramped and claustrophobic even before they start loading it, and once they have, Pete's ready to lay money down on who's going to snap first. At least with the mattresses down, there's enough space to set out cards and Joe and Pete, recent veterans of family holidays, make sure one of their first detours is to Toys R us to pick up travel boardgames.

"No monopoly or Risk," Andy says.

"You don't like Risk?"

Andy looks almost embarrassed. "I don’t like myself when play it," he says. "Travel scrabble?"

The van looks better by the time they leave the store, messier but more like it's theirs with the addition of two bright pink waterguns and Joe's new tiara, Andy driving in the front while the rest of them try to cheat at trivial pursuit.

The days stop being days pretty quickly. Pete's always lost track of time in summer and the band starts marking time by places instead. The bar in Ohio, graduation party in Sevilla, the truck stop where that guy tried to pick up Andy figuratively and the one where the trucker tried to pick up Andy literally, the place Pete slept with girl dressed up as Marilyn Monroe, the one where Joe had to be rescued from someone wearing way too much PVC.

The first night Pete spends sleeping on the roof in a sleeping bag because he just had to go for the extra garlic teaches him a valuable lesson about social harmony and sacrifice. He learns about the importance of sticking to your guns when he fights a sleeping Andy, all elbows and grip like a crocodile's jaw, for possession of his half of the blanket. Valuable life lessons, ones he tells his family about when they call.

After the first week, the "No sex in the van, and yes, that includes solo" gets put into place, which sucks, even though Pete's young, flexible and with a slight kink for sex in public places. His argument, that sex is like eating garlic on a date ("It's okay if everyone does it!") comes up against Andy's "How often do you think we can clean the sheets?" and Joe's lingering bitterness at being locked outside the van for thirty minutes. It's kind of strange, not having his room or Patrick's apartment or something to go back to, but it also makes Pete feel more like they're really doing this, touring, sex back stage like that's normal. Patrick says something about Pete getting a groupie habit, but it's not like that, it's just that there's nothing better after a show than finding someone that felt that too, in the band or on the dance floor, continuation of the music by another means.

He sleeps as badly as ever, but it's different when they're on the road. Staring out the window at the half-reflections of him and whoever's driving, road passing underneath them and not asleep, but not really awake either. It's like floating or something, disconnected and in limbo. The way Patrick will sing a little, quietly and to himself when he drives and they can sit side by side in the front for hours without talking or even really seeing each other. It's like being outside of time, outside of everything. Floating in a bubble made up of the walls of the van.

It gives him the chance to think, even if not so much thinking as letting his thoughts drift, until every now and then they crash in to each other like icebergs. Even the usual frustration when he can't sleep and needs to is better when he can concentrate on the sound of other people breathing instead of the endless ticking of the clock. It's like meditation, but he's concentrating on their breathing instead of his own.

They switch places a lot, preferences for right side/left side, front seats, warring with who has to sit next to Joe (occasional kicks, frequent affection), Pete (What? He's a teenager, health class and Judy Blum both tell him it's perfectly normal), the fact that Patrick sometimes runs through songs when he's hovering between consciousness (not as cute as you might think, especially when he's playing imaginary drums) or that Andy steals blankets and space without even a trace of guilt.

The shows blend in to each other and some are good -better than good, better than great, perfect for that moment right there- and some of them suck, the audience facing away, no-one dancing or mouthing the words, like they're playing in to a black hole, and they end to nothing, not even a pity clap, tired and exhausted and they've got a show booked for the next day and they have to keep going, not even time to take advantage of the few interested looks and--

And then the next show will be just as bad, and the one after that, but the one after that, oh, it's back to being perfect again. It feels like they just started doing this yesterday and like they've been doing this forever and as much as Pete hates the van and everyone in it sometimes, just the thought of that makes him grin.

"What?" Joe says, looking at him suspiciously.

"Nothing," Pete says, lifting his head up from the window.

"No, seriously, have you put chilipowder in my underwear again? Because that's not funny, not when you do it to me. Patrick or Andy maybe, but..."

Pete lets his grin turn evil, sees Joe weigh the odds and then sigh and check his bag for signs of tampering. "Shit, we need to find a Laundromat," Joe mutters. "This is getting-- wow, this is getting scary." He stares into it, then closes it and rears back. "Nearest college?"

This is an old routine by now, find a college, find the dorms and laundry room and the showers. Scissors paper stone for whose turn it is to do the laundry, trying to look like they belong. Smaller colleges are harder, but Pete does a good line in "thinking about attending" and "my cousin goes here," enough to get people warning them off or showing a bit of college pride. Joe fakes being a college student best, with an unerring gift at finding the single group of people least likely to notice someone using their shower.

Pete convinces a guy on a sports scholarship that he's thinking about pledging in to his frat when he joins and Andy fails at convincing a girl that no really, he's been there all year, he's just less memorable when he has his arms covered, but they invite them all back to the dorm, all incense and throwovers and posters of Escher and Klimt, something low and vaguely ethnic-lite playing in the background. Pete's mellowed, maybe, because he thinks this, but he doesn't think less of them, like he would have last year or even six months ago. It's like they're trying to find something else, something other and more interesting, and they're trying to do it from what they can get hold of, which is mostly Ikea and the local Fair Trade store. It's not capital-R *Real*, not hardcore or deep or anything, but it's... it's something.

Joe and some random guy announce that they're going to brave the laundry room together. "We can do this," random guy says. "How hard can it be, right?"

"Right," Joe says.

"I'm fed up with that look my mom gives me every time I get back home. I'm not a kid, I can wash my own sheets!" Joe pats him on the back and Pete thinks about saying that maybe they should have saved the mind-altering intoxicants for after, but he joins everyone else in the crowded dorm room in cheering them on.

Andy's girl turns out to be from some sorority, which leaves Pete feeling vaguely cheated. She looks smart and sincere and she's talking about vegan stuff and the ethics of soya and isn't in, like, a pink miniskirt or being bitchy, nothing like the movies. It leaves Pete and Patrick talking to the others about nothing, sitting in a circle on the floor of someone else's room and faking knowledge of student politics while trying to argue music in a way that doesn't fall back on, "because I'm right!" as a final argument. It's comfortable, and Pete thinks about going to college not just because it's automatic or a way of putting off real life, but for things like this. It'd be good, he thinks, and then a moment later, thinks, but how'm I gonna fit that in with touring? Because he can imagine going to college, but he can't imagine not doing this.

"Seriously, Catch 22," the guy opposite Pete says, leaning forwards. "You've got to read it, it's just... and it doesn't even make sense until the last page, and then you've got --"

"Micky, you've got to stop pushing that fucking overrated, yeah, I said it, book on everyone you meet," the girl next to him says.

"It's not overrated! If you actually paid attention in your motherfucking American Lit lectures--"

"My motherfucking American Lit, huh?" Teasingly.

"That's what I said, your motherfucking--" and he leans over and kisses her, "American --mmm-- Lit." And they're sitting across, making out until someone else shoves them and says, "Get a room, you exhibitionists."

Patrick meets Pete's eyes, rolls them a little and grins, shared moment of amusement and vague approval at couples being cute. It's one of those moments where the natural thing, the obvious thing, would be to kiss him and for a second he can't think why he can't do it, because it's Patrick and Patrick is his, and because Patrick is smiling and open and anyone could touch him right now, anyone at all, and Pete is right there, and then he thinks, _Patrick_ and remembers that it's not that he can't, it's that he shouldn't.

So he leans in, crawls under Patrick's arm and leans against him, sleepy and affectionate, then shuffles down so his head's resting on Patrick's thigh. Patrick barely looks at him, just a quick glance and Pete looks up and grins before Patrick's hand on his head pets through his hair idly, casually. It's the best argument against too much product Pete knows, and he turns his head away, eyes half-closing.

It's good and it makes him feel better, feel right in the way that thinking don't-kiss-him makes him feel wrong inside. He can hear his breathing steady, matching the shift of Patrick's body, Patrick's own breathing, even as he listens to him talk.

The conversation goes on above him and he can sort of detach the sound of it from the meaning, just let it wrap over him like white noise, only occasionally chiming in with a comment. He's not tired exactly, but he's got no desire to move, just stay there with his head on Patrick's leg, his hand there as well for comfort, feeling Patrick trying not to move, not to disturb him.

"But then how do you define it?" Andy's girl is saying. "By country? By continent?" She leans in and for a second her eyes meet Pete's and she's almost sympathetic before she goes back to saving the world or possibly flirting with Andy.

Pete wakes up the next day to Patrick pushing at his shoulder. His body aches. Floors really aren't any better for sleeping in than vans, and at least in the van there are mattresses. Patrick has his hand over Pete's mouth, his finger making a shush sign on his own, so Pete licks Patrick's hand, smiling and preparing to go back to sleep when Patrick makes a face and rubs his hand on his jeans. Patrick leans back and whispers, "Quiet, don't want to wake up the hosts."

They get, up get their stuff-- laundry looks cleaner than it did and still wearable, which is something- collect Joe from the hallway and meet up with Andy looking almost chipper and his sorority girl. Andy is noticeably not complaining about having to lie on the floor or rubbing his neck from not having a pillow and Pete upgrades chipper to smug.

Andy's girl buys them goodbye coffee and grabs Pete while they're packing up, pulling to one side.

"Hey, if you do come here," she says quietly, "We have a great LBGT group." She looks across at where Patrick is gesturing at the map with Andy, then back at Pete sympathetically. "High school can be a pretty bad place for figuring some stuff out."

"I'm not--" worried about that, he starts to say, and, "Patrick's--" just my friend. But he can't get either of them out, so he just says, "Thanks," because she obviously means it in a good way, even if she's wrong on all the details.

He gets used to waking up with Patrick next to him, for a definition of "get used to" which is less like building up a resistance and more like getting used to looking forward to the *anticipation* of it. It means when he goes to sleep next to Patrick there's a kind of buzz because he knows what that means in the morning, and it's a bonus, a perk of being in the band.

Part of it is that Pete kind of likes the feeling of wanting to roll over on to Patrick and not doing it. It makes him feel-- something, mature or noble or better than he was a year ago, because he could do that and he isn’t, he's sacrificing himself for the band, sex for friendship, and that's got to be a step in emotional development or something.

He likes to think about it like that, like he could just wake up one morning and jerk Patrick off (Joe and Andy disappear into the background or just sleep really soundly when he pictures this), but no, he's being good, he's being better, and he doesn't think about Patrick's response, Patrick pushing him away or saying, sleepily, "Huh, Pete? Stop humping me in your sleep." Or worse. He doesn't have to think about that because it's irrelevant, because Pete is being good and mature and it's almost a shame he can't explain this to the others, so they could appreciate him.

And Pete's proud of himself, because it's something that could be an issue but he has it under control, right up until they're in Ohio and he sees some guy put his hand on Patrick's shoulder and lean down to say something to him, talking right in his ear against the noise from the band playing on stage.

He's pushing through the crowds and he's halfway there before he comes back to himself enough to stop and think, and he's not sure how he got there, because he just saw that guy and Patrick and-- and that shouldn't be anything, people touch Patrick all the time and you kind of have to shout in someone's ear to be heard here, music so loud you can feel it more than hear it, and he shouldn't have his hands clenched in to fists. And then he sees them and the guy is still there and Pete knows that kind of smile, that kind of body language and Patrick is smiling at him like--

Like how he smiles at Pete in the morning when he's woken up naturally, then gone back to sleep for half an hour before actually getting up, or like he does after a show sometimes or before one or during and it's Pete's smile, it's the one for him and maybe Joe or Andy, maybe, but not like that, not with that extra little smirk, that little bit of angling his body in and tilting his head up.

Someone pushes in to him and he shoves back and breathes deeply, calming himself enough to be able to force his way out and look for them. There they are at the bar, Patrick sitting on a stool and the other guy leaning on the bar, drink in front of him. The back of Pete's hand itches from the under-18 stamp and he rubs it hard with his thumb before stopping himself. Patrick and the guy are angled away from the crowd, in and together, creating that tiny little bit of personal space you pretend you have in a place like this.

His urge, his instinct, is to charge in there and shove the guy over the bar, but he goes for the next best option, pushing himself between them, almost falling on the bar with his back to the guy like he didn't even see him. "It's fucking insane out there, Patrick," he says. "You've got to join us."

He hears the guy swear behind him, and it's possible Pete shoved him against the bar a little when he landed, but he tosses a, "Sorry, dude, didn't see you," over his shoulder before grabbing Patrick's hand and saying, "Come on, please? It's lonely there with just me and Andy and Joe and two hundred kids."

"Pete! Watch it, you're-- fuck, Gabe, are you all right?" Patrick says, pulling Pete out the way. He slides off his stool and pushes Pete out of their space and his hands hover over the guy before he shoots Pete an angry glance. "Pete, for-- moshing is for the pit, you freak, not the bar."

Pete holds up his hands. "What! I just didn't see him there. Hey, guy, I'm really sorry. You just-- I guess I just didn't notice you, you know? Still kind of hyped from there," he adds, nodding his head at the mass of people.

"I'm-- actually, no, that really kind of hurts." The guy shakes his hand out and Pete rolls his eyes at the overacting, but Patrick doesn't seem to notice, just hisses between his teeth and says, "here, let me," topping the ice out from his drink on to a napkin and holding it against the guy's hand. The guy stares at it for a moment, then says, "You know it's a bruise, not a burn, right?"

Patrick gives the guy the finger with his free hand and the guy smiles at him, then Patrick says, "So this isn't the best first impression, but Gabe, this is Pete Wentz, my bassist. Pete, Gabe Saporta, Midtown."

Gabe waves at him with the hand Patrick's not holding ice to. "Hey."

Pete looks at him blankly for a moment, because Patrick is making it sound like Pete should know who this guy is, and then it clicks. "Gabe! You're the guy that gave Patrick the black eye!" It's just chance that the bartender is refilling Gabe's drink when Pete says that, but Pete's kind of happy when she doubletakes and then gives Gabe a nasty look.

Gabe winces and says, "He did tell you that was an accident, right?"

"Right," Pete says. He shrugs. "I'm just saying if we're comparing bad first impressions--"

"Then we're probably pretty even," Gabe says, like he's agreeing with what Pete said, which is stupid. Giving Patrick a black eye isn't the same as getting pushed out the way a little.

"Sure," is what Pete says, non-committal. "Patrick didn't say anything about you being here."

"I didn't know," Patrick says, sounding a weird mixture of leftover angry at Pete and cheerful. "Midtown's doing a college thing here tomorrow. Just good luck." He's still holding the ice on Gabe's hand, his hand flat over it. Gabe is tall and kind of skinny and Pete thinks it's a good thing they banned sex in the van, because it couldn't be comfortable in there for Patrick with Gabe. Gabe's kind of the wrong size for sex in the van.

"So you're one of Patrick's New York friends?" Pete says, putting on a smile.

"Right, and you're in Patrick's Chicago band," Gabe says, then hissing a little when Patrick presses too hard.

"Pussy," Patrick says, lifting up the ice to have a look then putting it back.

"Technically, we're a Mid-west and heading east band now," Pete says.

"This is your first real tour though, right? Patrick talked about it a little when he was in the city." Gabe smiles down at the top of Patrick's head and he was probably taller than Bill, which was saying something. "Making plans for the future."

"I'm crazy that way," Patrick says in flattest voice. "I think it's fine, just bruised a little." He lifts up the ice.

"I really am sorry," Pete says. "I'd buy you a drink to apologise, but I'm broke and..." he holds up his hand, the red under-18 stamp, and tries to look apologetic.

"Hey, I'm easy to miss," Gabe says. "Not like you meant to hurt me, right?"

"Right," Pete says. "So you want me to grab Andy and Joe and go somewhere else, where it's easier to talk? And you can find your band," he tells Gabe.

Patrick hesitates and looks a little embarrassed and says, "Actually, I was thinking about maybe meeting up for breakfast. Uh, tomorrow."

Pete puts on a fake-hurt expression. "You don't want to show us off?"

"I'm kind of worried about the damage you might do, yes," Patrick says. He smiles at Pete and it's a good smile, friendly, happy, smug little undertone of I'm-getting-laid, and Pete wants to do something, something with his fists or maybe his mouth, because Patrick shouldn't be using that, the fact that Pete can read him that well, to tell him that's going to go off with someone who's his friend, that Pete's never even met, and then come back the next day looking cheerful and well-laid. It's like the worst bits of Patrick being in New York, which Pete supposes makes sense.

New York, the city, state and all inhabitants, suck.

But what he does is say, "I'll tell Andy and Joe not to wait up."

He goes back to the van, kicks at the tire and gets in, yanking the door open hard enough that it almost swings back and he gets in, slamming it shut behind him, kicking stuff off one of the mattresses so he has space to sit on it, and fuck, because this is, this is--

This is Pete feeling like he's either really unlucky or really fucking stupid, because either this has just happened now or he's felt like this the whole time and just didn't notice.

"Fuck," he says. It sounds empty and stupid in the van with no-one else there to hear it. Just him, no-one else's body there to soak up the sound, just the vague sound of traffic outside. He smells sweaty and like the club and the van smells like all of them, too much time together and it's weird being in here on his own, not even hearing them outside filling up the gas or something. It’s too bright under the streetlights and he can see Patrick smiling at that guy.

Stupid fucking Gabe Saporta and stupid cheating Patrick, giving away Pete's smile like it doesn't even matter and what the fuck's up with that? Like he can't even have known the guy for two months and Patrick's smiling at him like he's Pete? Because what, they fucked and he knows they did, he can see it practically right in front of his eyes, picture it clear as day, and somehow that gets Gabe the same smile that Pete gets, Pete who's his bassist, who gives Patrick his words and is on stage with him and has known him for months, almost a year?

That's just wrong, and Patrick's obviously got some fucked up priorities if he thinks maybe the fact that he fucked the guy -and it can't have been a big deal, because Patrick didn't talk about him, didn't phone Gabe everyday or anything- in any way equates to what Pete is to him.

His face is tight and his teeth are gritted and he knows he's still keeping stuff back from himself, so he relaxes his hold enough to just it come. Patrick with Gabe, the obvious affection and friendship, and then the fact that Patrick didn't stop it there, that he let the rest of it exist as well. For Gabe. Not for Pete.

The van door opens and Pete jumps, tries to look normal. Joe clambers in, noisier than he has to be. "Pete? Thought you'd still be in there."

Pete shrugs. "Just not feeling it." Joe pushes the stuff on his mattress over on to the third mattress and Pete says, "Patrick's not gonna be back tonight." His throat feels tight, but the words come out like normal.

"Yeah? Sweet," Joe says, sounding appropriately impressed and approving. His back's to Pete as he shuffles stuff around.

"Yeah, he met up with this guy he knows from New York, Gabe something. The guy that gave him the black eye with the guitar?"

Joe tugs his T-shirt off, muffling his voice. "Midtown, right? Bass player?"

"Maybe," Pete shrugs. "Anyway, he's staying with him. Said maybe we should all meet up in the morning."

"Cool," Joe says, pulling the sheet up over him. "You gonna be awake long?" He sounds like he's fading, that bit of having all the energy in the world until you lie down.

"No," Pete says, which he knows is a lie. He feels tired all of a sudden, even though he knows he won't be able to sleep.

"Whatever, just don't wake me up if you get restless," Joe says, half-asleep already. Pete hates him for a second, the pure hatred of an insomniac for someone who can fall asleep waiting in line. He waits for Joe's breathing to steady, to start doing that weird little wheezing snore thing he does sometimes. "So it turns out," he tells Joe's sleeping back silently, "that I'm only okay with the idea of Patrick seeing other people when it doesn't happen."

Joe's imaginary "Yeah?" sounds unsurprised.

"I think I'm in love with him," Pete says in his head. "Really, really fucking in love. Which sucks, by the way."

Yeah, imaginary Joe says. It really does. Especially when you know he's out with some guy that he seems to actually like, that he has stuff in common with and who probably has Patrick on his knees or in his bed right now.

Pete gives imaginary Joe a mental finger and the sighs, kicks off his shoes and jeans and crawls under the blanket, pulling it up over his head to block out as much of the ambient city light as possible and tries to sleep.

 

 

He wakes up in a worse mood than when he went to sleep and aims a kick at whoever just touched him.

"Pete, wake up. Coffee, if you wake up. Coffee, coffee, coffee..." Andy says.

Pete opens his eyes and turns his head to look at him, but Andy's lying, there's no coffee, not even a whiff of it. Evil lying son of a bitch.

"Come on, hot coffee and free refills," Andy says. He pulls the cover off Pete and the doors of the van are wide open and it's sunny, which is just the final insult. Pete whimpers pathetically and tries to grab the blanket back, but Andy is stern, cruel. Sadistic. "I let you sleep on the way here," he says, which makes Pete sit up. They're not parked where they were when he eventually got to sleep.

"Come on, it's ten foot to the booth, and you can have all the coffee you want," Andy says. "All you've got to do is get up and be--" he hesitates. "And be as human as you can."

"I hate you," Pete says, but he reaches around for a cleanish T-shirt and finds one that smells okay and pulls it on, finding his shoes and slipping them on without socks. He doesn't recognise the carpark. It's bright, not hot yet but promising it. Pete squints at Andy against the light. "Joe," he says, because Joe was there when he finally got to sleep, sprawled out like he was taking over the space where Patrick wasn't. "Did you lose him somewhere?"

"Already inside," Andy says. "Come on, let's get you caffeinated."

The diner smells like food, which is good, and coffee, which is better. Pete heads over to the counter in search of it, but Andy grabs him and steers him over to a booth. Joe's leaning against the wall, eyes closed and mouth open, some guy Pete doesn't know sitting opposite, but that's all irrelevant, because Pete's only looking at one thing. There's coffee on the table, and Pete grabs for one. His hands curl around it and someone says, "That's my cup."

"I will kill you if you try to take it from me," Pete says, and takes a sip, then makes a face. "Fuck, how much sugar did you put in this? And it's practically all milk." He drains it, then looks up and around for a refill.

"My coffee," the guy says mournfully.

"You don't deserve coffee," Pete says. "Hi, ma'am, can I get a refill here?" he smiles at the waitress, because you're always nice to people with caffeine. "And a menu too, maybe?"

"Pete, don't be an ass," Andy says.

Pete glares at him. "I haven't had my coffee," he says, biting out the words. "It's-- fuck, it's whatever time it is in the morning and I haven't had my coffee."

"No, but you had mine," the other guy says.

Pete opens his mouth to say something, then rethinks. He did steal the guy's coffee. "Sorry about that," he says. "I'm pretty sure I needed it more than you."

"No excuse for stealing coffee," the guy says. "Not even if your sick dying mother needs it. Some things just go over the line."

Pete grins at him, feeling-- well, not human, but at least within shouting distance of it. "I'm an anti-hero."

"You're a jerk," Joe says, slurring the words and coming awake. "Is there-- oh, food," he says, staring at the waitress like she's all that is good and right in the world.

She smiles at him and slides a plate of eggs, hash browns, fried tomatoes and toast over to him. "Here you go," she says, putting a stack of pancakes in front of the coffee-less guy.

"I love you," Joe says with utter sincerity.

"I'll love you more if you bring me the same, but with scrambled eggs," Pete says. "And more coffee. And-- who's paying for this?"

"Whoever gets here last," coffee-less guy says. "Midtown rules."

"No they don't," Pete says, partly out of morning bitchiness but mostly because he misses having siblings around to wind up.

"Pete, if you can't play nice with the other bands..." Andy says.

"Sorry. I really am," he says, meeting the guy's eyes. "I'm lousy in the mornings and I didn't sleep well last night and also, I'm kind of an asshole sometimes." He shifts in his seat and says, "So we're meeting Patrick here? And your guy, too, I guess."

"Gabe and Heath, Rob was here like, two minutes ago and-- oh, lost him to pinball. We lose more drummers that way."

Joe starts humming pinball wizard and Andy taps it out on the table with one hand and Pete's looking at the doorway so he can see when they come in. Patrick's turning his head back to tell Gabe something, and Gabe looks-- he looks too perky for being up right now, like he should at least have bags under his eyes, because Pete probably looks like hell and he didn't have Patrick keeping him up all night.

He pauses on that sentence, breaks it down and illustrates it for extra masochism in the time it takes them to walk over. "Hey," Patrick says, shoving Pete over so he can squeeze in. He smells clean, in a way that reminds Pete he didn't get a chance to clean up last night and should probably see how much help the restroom can be. Patrick doesn't smell like their soap.

There's not enough space for them and Gabe, so he sits opposite. Pete doesn't really look at him, concentrating on his coffee and his food when it arrives. Patrick's pressed up against him and Pete kind of wants to lean on him because Patrick's always good for that, but Gabe's sitting across from him, Joe and the coffee-less guy and Andy there as well and Pete's not sure he can do it.

Patrick steals one of his tomatoes and he's just-- he's happy, and Pete doesn't want to think it, but he looks well-laid, well-fucked, none of the usual early morning tension and stiffness from sleeping in the van. Gabe probably took him back to his hotel, gave him his bed and bought him fucking dinner or something, giving him stuff and taking care of him and--

And he's being stupid, because it's one night and sleeping in an actual bed and with a real shower can do that. It's not like Patrick and Gabe are being obnoxiously coupley or anything, which really, what's wrong with the guy? Why isn't he all over Patrick?

"So when are we off?" he says. It comes out kind of abrupt, so he says, "Do I have time for pancakes? Since we're not paying."

"We've got--" Patrick grabs Gabe's hand, turns it to look at his watch. "About thirty minutes? It's that late already?"

"I blame you," Gabe says.

"Me? It's my fault you--" and Pete can see everyone else at the table turn to look at Patrick, hear Patrick choke back his words, but only from the corner of his eye because he's looking at Gabe. He doesn't see Patrick's expression, but he can guess, embarrassed but okay with it.

Gabe doesn't notice because he's looking at Patrick. He waves a hand at him in explanation. "All on you, Patrick Martin Stump," he says.

"I've got to--" Pete says, standing up and pushing Patrick out, looking for the restroom and locking the door behind him. He rests his hands on the edge of the sink, looking at the limescale around the drain, the soap residue, then he runs the water and cups his hands, bringing them up to take a sip and then slash the water on his face.

He looks at himself in the mirror and winces. The water clumps his lashes together, smudges his eyeliner even more. He has bags under his eyes and they look bigger than usual, open and bruised, T-shirt that doesn't fit and he looks like a thirteen year old runaway, eight hours away from peddling his ass on some street corner. He bends over the sink to wash his hands and he's still got the stamp from the club, not coming off even with soap. Fuck it.

There's a knock on the door and then he hears, "Pete? Tyler's making threatening noises about your pancakes."

Patrick, of course, because realising you've got some stupid doomed, one-sided crush on your best friend isn't bad enough, you've got to get it rubbed in your face that you're going to be spending the next month practically living in each other's skin.

"Yeah, I'm just--" he splashes at the sink. "We don't all get the luxury of hotel showers," he says. "Some of us are suffering for our art."

"If I'm the only one clean in a van with the three of you, I'm pretty sure that makes me the one suffering."

"Says the guy that spent the night in an actual bed." He tries to make his voice sound right, teasing, and he's no idea if he's managed. "But I guess it's not like you were sleeping. Just checking, but you're gonna be okay to drive, right? No problems sitting down or--" Pete stops and then smiles without meaning to. "You know I can actually hear you giving me the finger through the door?"

"Useful talent," Patrick says. "It must come up a lot."

"People love me," Pete says, drying his hands. "They just don't always know it."

He opens the door and almost has to catch Patrick who was leaning on it. His hands are on Patrick's arms, just below the sleeves of his T-shirt and he has to force himself to smile, step back and say something about Patrick not even being able to stand.

Pete calls shotgun when they get in the van because he knows it's Andy's turn to drive and he doesn't want to sit in the back with Patrick when Patrick's still cheerful and smelling of hotel soap, but Joe gets there first. Joe has no respect for the rules of the road, Joe was raised by feral beasts, and Joe laughs when Pete tells him this.

"Fine," Pete says, getting in the back, kicking Joe's jacket off the left mattress while Joe looks back serenely.

"You know cotton doesn't have any nerve cells, right?" Joe says. "So you're not hurting it at all."

"I think it's more like voodoo," Andy says. "Any sudden pains in your left sleeve?"

"Pete," Joe says, leaning over the seat and looking him in the eye with a serious expression. "Are you going to be a moody bitch today?"

"Blow me," Pete says.

"So that's a yes then. If you were a real girl, I'd offer you some chocolate or something." Pete lifts his head and Joe rolls his eyes. "You're not getting my chocolate."

Andy checks his watch and Joe opens the door on his side and yells out, "Patrick! Finish kissing your New York boyfriend goodbye and get your ass in the car!" then giggles, like he said something funny.

Patrick opens the door and gets in the back. Pete steals a glance and Patrick looks ruffled, just a little, just enough that Pete can fill in the blanks.

"Remind me why I like you," Patrick asks Joe. "There's got to be a reason, I just can't think of it right now."

Joe lets his head flop backwards over the seat so his face is upside down and says, "Is it because I'm so cute?"

"You're adorable," Patrick says, leaning forwards on all fours to scratch at Joe's neck like he's a cat, making Joe flinch forwards protectively. It puts Patrick across Pete's feet, even if he's not touching them and it makes Pete's stomach clench, makes him think "I want this" and "I'm never gonna have this" and he knows he's got to work on getting used to that.

Denial is so much better when you don't realise you're doing it. He shifts against the side of the van, knees drawn up and wonders if he can fake motion sickness enough to get moved to the front. Probably not til they start actually driving.

Patrick sits back against the other side of the van, mirroring Pete, looking at him until Pete goes, "What?" defensively.

"Hey," Patrick says, pushing at Pete's foot with one of his own. He smiles, not big, but a little I-like-you smile and Pete smiles back automatically, even if he's still half-frowning.

"Hey," he says back.

Patrick's smile goes a little wider, and Pete thinks yes, that's my smile, like it should be. It’s pure masochism, but he shuffles round so he's leaning against Patrick and rests his head on Patrick's shoulder. The day's already promising to be too hot for human contact soon and it's only just okay now, but he breathes in, and it's a good thing he already does this enough that it's not weird for him to be doing it now.

Patrick hums something under his breath, something vaguely familiar and Pete thinks, I'm never going to get over this. He closes his eyes and lets Patrick shift to make him more comfortable and tries not to be happy that the smell of the hotel soap is already getting eroded by being in the van.

 

It's pretty much impossible to give someone their space when you're touring, even if you're not sleeping packed into the same van, but the guys manage a pretty good job of it and Pete's stuck behind his invisible wall of stupid realisation, because that's the problem, not that he's dumb enough to be fucking head over heels, death do us part, stay in bed all day and get your name tattooed across my heart in love with Patrick. The problem is that he was stupid enough not to realise it for almost a year, and then he was stupid enough to realise it *now*.

It means that every time he looks back, he just wants to cringe because how could he not realise? Why didn't he think about it, how he didn't just hate Faye because she was irritating and Patrick could do better, how he made Patrick call him every fucking morning when he was in New York, and he can't even think about the thing after Patrick broke up with Faye, because yeah, Pete, of course you just wanted to make him feel better.

He wasn't handling a perfectly normal combination of Patrick being his best friend and him also thinking that Patrick was hot, he was lying to himself and Patrick and everyone and it's so obvious now. He stays like that for a show in someone's basement, one at a college bar and one cancelled due to rats at the club, his mood fuelling his playing, and then Pete sees his dad in the audience in a show in Michigan. His dad's wearing a tie to a punk club without even any irony and Pete loses his place in the song.

Patrick looks over, follows Pete's gaze and grins. "You fucker, you knew this?" Pete says over the song. Patrick doesn't answer, can't in the middle of his verse, but Pete sees Andy and Joe smile and he's barely waiting for their set to finish before he's jumping off stage.

His dad grabs him into a hug and Pete doesn't even think about fighting it. He hadn't really let himself think about how much he missed his family until his dad's right there, his stupid tie under Pete's nose and for once, Pete feels like he's six years old in a good way. He lets go enough to say, "What are-- why are you-- Dad?"

"Your mother's outside with your brother," his dad says. "Couldn't make it past the bouncer." He pushes Pete back. "Have you lost weight?"

"I don't see how, what with all the junk food and sweets I've been eating," Pete says, trying to keep his expression straight but breaking into a grin before he finishes the sentence. "Andrew's here?"

Andrew and his mom are waiting outside talking to the bouncer. Pete arrives in time to hear his brother say, "Yes, but that's because they suck." He tries to hug his mom and knuckle the top of his brother's head at the same time with mixed success. His mom smells like mom and this is the longest he's been away from seeing her since camp and Andrew looks almost exactly the same as when he left, summer tan and recent haircut aside. It's only been a month, but it feels longer.

"How come you're all here?" he says.

"Just lucky," his mom says. "We're on the way to visit your Aunt Hannah and Andy suggested we meet up here." She squeezes his hand and Andrew rolls his eyes, embarrassed on Pete's behalf but Pete just smiles because he's old enough that he's not embarrassed at his parents treating him like a kid.

"Andy did? He didn't say anything, sneaky little..."

"I think he prefers devious," Joe says from behind him.

"Deviant," Pete says, but Joe's smiling because Pete's smiling, which makes Pete smile more and give his mom a one-armed hug because they're his family and he missed them a lot.

"We're only staying over in town tonight," his mom says. "But we've got you and the boys a couple rooms in the hotel so we can have breakfast together at least."

"You're with me," Andrew says. "I figured the guys would be sick of you by now, so--" he dodges Pete's kick, but that was just a distraction for Pete to sneak-attack a hug.

"That's-- I've got to help the guys pack up," Pete says, "but--"

"We'll do it this time," Joe says. "But only this time, so you can head back to the hotel with your parents. You can tell them about that thing in Marksden."

"Or I could never tell them about that ever," Pete says. "Uh, it's nothing bad," he says at his mom's expression. "Joe just thinks things are funny when they're not."

The drive back is good. Pete's hyper at first, but Andrew falls asleep on him and that forces him to calm down and talk to his parents in a low voice so as not to wake him. He's sure they've heard everything already in phone calls and emails, but they don't complain when he says it again. It feels weird, like coming home from college or something, because he doesn't feel like a kid or anything, but he does feel comforted, better. It's not that he needs them to take care of him, because the last months proven that he's got Andy and Joe and Patrick for that, but he knows that if he did need it, his parents, his family, would be there.

Andrew wakes him up too early in the morning, but Pete doesn't even object too much, because hotel. Shower. Privacy, and he needs that.

Breakfast is good, even if Andy and Patrick keep trying to casually order healthy things for him, which-- his parents know he eats junk, they're not going to take it as a sign that Patrick and Andy are a bad influence. He rolls his eyes and eats the fresh blueberries and yogurt anyway, just to make them relax, but refuses the muesli point blank.

"So your birthday present," his mom says. Pete tries not to look guilty.

"Still in one piece," Pete says, which is true even if the cell-phone's a little more scratched than it was when they gave it to him. "I know I didn't call much lately, but--"

"Oh, honey, that wasn't a present for you, that was for us," his mom says.

"Didn't like you being out of touch for so long," his dad says. "Not that you couldn't call more, but--"

"We're getting you inked," Joe says, too excited to keep it in. "We got-- Andy knows this guy here, and one of your parents has to come in and sign a thing for you because you're still technically a minor, but-- We've been saving up so it's from all of us, and-- yeah. It's gonna look so cool."

"So as a late birthday present, we're going to have you stuck full of needles," Patrick says. "Because that's how much we love you."

"I'm going with you," his mom says. "You know how your father is with needles. He can't even look when I put my earrings in," she explains to Andy.

"I don't-- how'd you know--" and it's not like they don't know what design he wants, because he's been playing around with it for months. He just thought he'd have to wait and get a job that pays real money to pay for it. "Every time I look at it, I'm gonna think of you," he tells them.

"You know how creepy that sounds, right?"

Pete grins and gives him the finger. Patrick's hand shoots out and covers his, forcing it down and he says, "Be nice in front of your parents. We want them to let you stay with us a bit longer."

Patrick's hand is warm and it's just a random tiny moment that makes Pete think, if we were together it wouldn't be much different. He can feel the temptation to brood, the way that thought could be like a fishhook in his heart, but he pushes that away and lets it be something happy, something sweet. It's a good night's sleep for once, or having his family and his other family there, but he just feels good. Cared for. Loved.

Andy drives them to the tattoo place in the van and Andrew is equal parts impressed by it and disgusted. "You're practically sleeping in the same bed as my brother," Pete catches him telling Joe while he strips the mattresses for the Laundromat near the tattoo parlour. "That's not *hygienic*."

It's a nice place, clean but not creepily sterile looking and the guy spends ten minutes talking to Andy about getting his tats touched up while Pete looks at the photos of the guy's work. His dad manages a whole five minutes before Andrew takes pity on him, rolls his eyes and says, "I'm kind of thirsty, can we get a coke?"

His dad looks grateful enough that Pete's mum has to force down the same smile Pete's trying not to give.

The tattooist, Andy's guy, looks at Pete's design and lifts an eyebrow. "It's gonna hurt like fuck."

"I know," Pete says. "It's cool, I can take it."

"Yeah?" The tattooist looks at Andy and Pete's mom, going over Pete's head.

"Well, he's vain, so that should help."

"Mom!"

She waves a hand at him. "I just mean you don't mind hurting to look good. But you're the professional, so if you think he should go for something smaller, something more discreet--"

"Mom, I can take it!" Pete says. "It's fine, seriously."

The tattooist looks at him, then holds up the design. "We start off doing the collar here, and that's gonna hurt like a bitch, and if you're still standing at the end of it, we can do the shoulders, or if not you can come back another time."

"Fine, whatever. This is gonna look so good when it's done," Pete says. He takes off his shirt and the guy shakes his head at the old one.

"Bad work," he says, running his fingers over it. Pete shivers a little, then grins.

"Turns out, skeevy tattooists in ask-no-questions parlours don't always have, like, the best artistic talent," Pete says.

He sits in the chair and the guy cleans his skin, the smell of alcohol giving him a weird déjà vu mash-up, clubs and hospitals, prepares the area and applies the transfer. It's different from the first time because Pete can actually see what the guy's doing. His skin prickles, anticipation of pain and excitement and his grin is wide. Even the transfer looks cool, like purple henna.

"Looks good," Andy says when it's all applied. "You're ready?"

"More than," Pete says. "Come on, let's go."

Which turns out to be a slight miscalculation, because it really is fucking painful and he spends about ten minutes angry at himself because it's not like he can complain now, not when he made such a big deal about how he could take it.

And then he thinks fuck it, and starts bitching and moaning.

"Dad says we have to go pretty soon," Andrew says, staring. "That's what you're getting? That's gotta be killing you. My brother's kind of a wuss," he tells the tattoo artist.

"Respect your-- motherfucking Christ that hurts!" Pete glares at Andrew, trying to keep still. "I'm gonna kick your ass when I get home!"

"Peter, language," his mom says.

"Sorry," he says, and then catches the tattoo guy smirking. Giving him the finger probably isn't a smart move right now, so he settles for a glare.

He sees his family off with careful hugs and a promise to his dad to tell him nothing, no details, about the tattoo. Andrew hugs him tight and he's smaller than Pete, but not by much. Pete hopes he gets a growth spurt before Andrew does, but it's looking less likely by the day.

When the tattoo artist starts up again, it hurts even more, but at least now Pete can be as foulmouthed as he likes. It's kind of fascinating, but also the guy is a fucking sadist and Andy is a twisted son of a bitch for laughing, even though Pete admits it's probably funny from the outside. He's focussed on that and trying to find something creatively obscene to call Andy when Joe and Patrick arrive.

"People are animals--" Patrick says at they come in, just as the tattoo artist starts right on the bone.

"Fuck! Fucking hell, motherfucking--" Pete says, and he sees Patrick flinch, looks over for a second and-- Pete's distracted by the thousands of needles digging in to his skin, but Patrick's eyes drop, just for a second, quick enough that Pete's not sure he didn't just imagine it.

Joe pushes past Patrick. "Whoa. Can I see?" He comes to stand near Pete and he's got exactly the right expression, impressed and a little envious, but he's standing right in front of Pete, blocking his view of Patrick.

"It's not finished yet," Pete says, trying to keep him away while keeping still.

"Yeah, I figured that from the fact that he's still at work," Joe says. "Dude, that looks so good. So much better than you crappy earth thing one."

"What do you think, Patrick?" Pete says.

"I think I'm going to watch from here, away from the needles and the blood," Patrick says. "Uh, no offence," he adds to the tattooist.

"None taken."

Pete pouts and then gives up and looks smug. Patrick is just kind of pussy some times, and it's good to be reminded of that, even if it means Patrick is standing across the room from him. It still hurts like a bitch, but endorphins or something are kicking in, something that makes him say, "Come on, what do you think?"

Patrick edges over, like the needles are gonna jump out of the gun and into his eyes or something, but Andy gives him a little push and he's standing there looking. "It's cool," he says.

"You didn't even look properly," Pete says. "Please, Patrick?" He tries to sound needy and succeeds a little too easily.

Patrick actually looks this time. "Fuck, Pete," he says, breathy and admiring and it's a tone of voice that does something to Pete. That's not new. It's just that he's more aware of it now, it's sharper, stronger.

"Nah, that's what you're getting me for Christmas," he says. It's just bad timing, because it should be a joke, he means it as a joke, but the tattoo artist presses in a little too hard and Pete ends on a gasp and-- oh.

Oh, there, just for a moment, Patrick's eyes dropped to his mouth and then looked back up and Pete wouldn't have noticed it, Patrick's gaze clear and natural, but it was there, just for a second. That moment of appreciation.

"It looks really good," Patrick says sincerely. Openly.

"I really do, don't I?" Pete says, gesturing carefully at his body, wanting Patrick to follow the movement so he can see it again.

He doesn't get it, just Patrick grinning and saying, "It's not fair always leaving Andy to be the pretty one."

It's a disappointment, something that makes his stomach tighten, but he did see it, he knows he did. He just needs to get it again to be sure. He hums out the opening chords of Calm Before the Storm and Patrick picks it up automatically, unthinkingly and only realising what he's doing when Pete grins and leans his head back, closing his eyes and he knows it's a good look on him. He can feel the needles, the ink edging closer to completion and he feels weirdly giddy. Painful as hell, but the endorphins are kicking in or something.

"This is my best seventeenth birthday yet," he says.

"You're planning on having a lot of them?" Patrick says. Hearing him with his eyes closed like this is almost like being in the van, close and intimate even with Joe and Andy and whoever else there.

"Well, next year I'll be eighteen, and that's just crappy. I'll have to vote and care about politics," Pete says. "Seventeen, I can already do all the important things." He grins and for the first time in days, since he realised what a stupid, blind, stupid, juvenile, pathetic and stupid idiot he was, Pete doesn't feel like punching himself.

[Next part](http://jamjar.livejournal.com/100715.html)


	5. Fic: This story's going somewhere, bandom, RPS, non-gen 5/5

5/5  
[Previous part](http://jamjar.livejournal.com/100587.html)  
He starts testing things. Carefully at first, until he realises how much he has to do for it to be more than they are already, because Pete's already the kind of friend that licks Patrick's neck on occasion, Patrick's already the kind of guy that accepts it when someone rolls on to him when he's in bed. It's not just Pete, it's Joe and Andy once, but Pete's watching for it now, and now he's stopped being careful, he keeps coming up against the places where Patrick *is*.

Patrick lets Pete crawl all over him, and then he's careful when he touches Pete. His hands don't rest anywhere that should be personal. He lets Pete hug him, he hugs him back (and Pete knows that Patrick thinks Pete needs it, and he does, just maybe not as much as he lets Patrick think) and his hands are on his back, around his waist but sticking to the sides. He rubs out the knots in Pete's back once when Pete misjudged a stage dive ("There has to be people there, Pete! Look before you hurl yourself off the speakers!"), and they stayed on his shoulders, his back. Pressing down hard and never lingering.

He leans against Pete in the van and Pete can feel him all along his side, breathing syncing up the way it does when you're that close to someone, and Patrick--

It's not that he doesn't look, or that he looks too much. It's just that he's so precise, so utterly natural and casual that Pete knows it has to be deliberate. People aren't like that, there's always moments where a strip of skin catches your eye or you're randomly horny or drifting and you just-- and Patrick doesn't, he's so careful and so perfectly natural and it's almost like how he was with Bill, except Patrick has so much more practice at this with Pete.

He wants this so much it makes him hurt, and it's like even if he had it, even if was able to just do this, it wouldn't ease that. He's not sure that anything would, not even having everything he wants. It's like how he doesn't stop wanting the weight of Patrick's arm across his shoulders when he gets it.

He catches himself watching Patrick on stage one night and for a moment his hands shake, and he has to go up to Patrick, press against him and lean on him, breathing in and feeling the rise and fall of his lungs. Close his eyes and inhale.

He's not sure how much longer he can keep this up.

He's not sure how much longer he can get away with it, because Patrick is looking at him, and it's the same way he looked at Bill. Pete keeps pushing anyway, so he's not surprised when Andy grabs him one night after a show, pulls him away from following Patrick to the bar and says, "What are you doing?"

"What?" Pete says, stalling.

"Do you need me to spell it out for you?"

"I'm not--"

"Peter Lewis Kingston Wentz, what the *fuck* do you think you're doing?"

Pete stops trying to stall. Andy has his arms folded and the light hits his glasses turning them into flat white panes of reflected glare and it's Andy, who is scary as fuck even when he doesn't have fate doing his special effects. "I'm just--" he starts to say.

"You're making Patrick uncomfortable," Andy says, and he sounds way too precise. "You're freaking him out, Pete."

"I don't want him to," Pete says. "I just-- I can't help it?"

The look Andy gives him has him flinching, has him shifting his weight like he's bracing for taking a hit or giving one. "Don't give me that. You can help it, you're just--"

"I really can't, even if--"

"You helped it just fine up til now," Andy says. "What changed?"

Pete laughs. It sounds weird to his own ears, too much humour and not bitter enough, but fuck, it actually is kind of funny. "Andy. I can just be really, really dumb about things."

He's actually managed to surprise him, because Andy steps back and thank god, out of the lights so at least Pete can see his actual eyes again. "Wait, you mean you didn't--"

"Ignorance is the best defence," Pete says. "Especially from personally fucking things up for yourself. But I can't not know it now, I can't just-- I can't pretend, not like before, and I'm not-- it's different now. Andy, I'm not a kid."

"You're not winning any prizes for maturity," Andy says.

"Yeah, ha ha, very funny, but seriously. I'm not--" Pete shrugs, folds his arms across himself shoulders up and hunched in. "I'm not saying that Patrick was wrong, like, at the beginning, maybe. I'm not saying he was right, but I can see, you know, why he might think I was a bad idea. Romantically or whatever. But it's different now, I'm not the same person I was then."

"Because twelve months makes so much--"

"Twelve months is a fucking lifetime and you know it," Pete says.

Andy takes off his glasses and cleans them on the edge of his T-shirt. Pete lets him have the moment to think. Andy sighs, puts his glasses back on, and says, "I don't want you to hurt yourself and I don't want you to hurt Patrick either."

"I won--" Pete starts to say, then stops. "You know, I'm not gonna say that'll never happen, because it happens now sometimes. But I won't let this hurt us, the group. You guys are pretty much the best thing that's ever gonna happen to me and I'm not going to fuck that up irredeemably, ever. Any more than you would."

"Always leave us with enough to fix, huh?"

"Stick a needle in my eye, promise," Pete says.

Andy flinches at the image and Pete grins. "So we're good?" He says after a moment.

Andy shakes his head then his arms around Pete, pulling him in for a quick hug, just hard enough to hurt. "We're pretty amazing, or so I hear," Andy says. "I'm taking you at your word, you know. Whatever happens. Even if nothing happens."

"Yeah," Pete says. "Okay."

 

 

He finds Patrick in the club, slides through the crowd and against him, putting his arm around him and leaning in. Patrick glances at him and grins, post-show happy, and goes back to talking to the two girls in front of him and Pete rolls his eyes, because what is Patrick thinking? They're not that pretty and they look kind of bored and one of them, the shorter one, is looking at Patrick with the kind of mild social contempt they should have grown out of when they left high school and they're clearly not pretty enough to warrant it. Not cool enough either, based on the clothes. Not smart enough either, because they're not crawling all over Patrick even though he's right there in front of them. Not that he wants them to, just that it's stupid not to.

"Pete," Patrick says. "This is, uh, Kay and Em."

"Cute names," Pete says. Patrick elbows him and Pete adjusts his sincerity levels.

"Hey, you were in the band! Love your tattoo," Kay says, straightening up and looking interested, not looking at Patrick at all.

"Uh, yeah," Pete says. He can't actually lean any more in to Patrick, so he just rests his hand on Patrick's stomach and tilts his hips a little. It's such a chick move, marking territory, but Pete believes in learning from the experts. "So was Patrick." He adds, smiling wide and closed-mouthed.

"Really? I didn't see you," she says. To Patrick, completely ignoring Pete draping himself all over Patrick. It's pretty impressive.

"He's the singer," Pete says, slowly because she's obviously not exactly smart. "He was the one in the middle of the stage. Singing."

"You were?" And now she's leaning in to Patrick and Patrick's face is sliding in to blank and hits it when she says, "That's so cool!"

"That's me," Patrick says. "Cool."

Pete switches between thinking it's cute and dumb that Patrick doesn't like it when the lead singer thing works for him, and thinking it makes perfect sense, because who wouldn't want Patrick just for being Patrick? Either way, it's clearly making Patrick uncomfortable that the girls are getting their groupie on, so Pete has to help out.

"Ladies, I've got to steal my singer away for a moment," Pete says, dragging Patrick off. Patrick does struggle until Pete has them safely away. Pete looks at him for a second, arms crossed, channelling his mom or Andy on a bad day.

"What?" Patrick says.

"What do you mean, what? What about you!"

The look Patrick gives him as flat as Pete singing Wuthering Heights. "I do, occasionally, like to talk to other people, hard as that is for you to accept."

"You didn't want to talk to them," Pete says.

"I'm so lucky I have you to tell me these things about myself," Patrick says, folding his arms. His mouth's tight but Pete's happy to ignore it.

"Don't be a bitch, I'm just... You know what, it's not even about me," Pete says.

"For once."

Pete ignores Patrick's comment and keeps talking. "Even Gabe Saporta was better. I'm not saying it's wrong to sleep with groupies," Pete says. "You shouldn't do it, but I'm not saying it's wrong generally--"

"You're sure? Because it sounds a lot like that's exactly what you're saying." Patrick sounds pissy. "And I didn’t think they were groupies, they're just girls, women, in a club. For once, I just wanted--"

"To get laid?" Pete says. "You know you could have pretty much-- you could do better."

"You've got an inflated opinion of me."

"Patrick," Pete says. "You could do better."

There's a pause where it feels like it should be quiet, instead of just as noisy, music and people as loud, as it was before. Pete holds his breath, waiting for Patrick to say something or not say something, to just ignore it.

"You have an inflated opinion of yourself," Patrick says quietly.

"I don't think so." Pete's voice is just as quiet and he wishes he was touching Patrick right now, even just a little, leaning in instead of standing with more than a foot of air between them.

"Pete, don't. You're--" Patrick looks at him, meets his eyes and says, "You're homesick or lonely or horny or all of the above, but you're not *this*."

"I've stopped fucking other people," Pete says. He can feel his nails digging in to the palms of his hands and he has to force his fingers to relax.

Patrick looks at him, frowning a little like he doesn't get it. "What?"

Pete licks his lips, not as a come on but because they're kind of dry and he sounds weird in his own head, way too aggressive when he says, "So if that's what was worrying you, we should fuck now, because you know I'm not sleeping around."

Patrick blinks at him and Pete can feel his hands curling up again. "Pete, I'm-- you shouldn't not have sex with people because you think that'll get you me. We're not--"

Pete shakes his head and it's weird, it's like picking a fight. Coasting on adrenaline and reckless and feeling your nerves spark with anticipation. "You don't get it. I don't want them, I want you." And he knows he sounds sulky and his *age*, but fuck it.

He can see Patrick's expression soften, see him preparing to be kind. "Pete, I'm sorry, I can't do this with you. I don't feel that way. I love you, but--"

"You want me, I know." Pete crosses and uncrosses his arms. "I'm not that fucking naïve, I know you-- I've seen how you look at me sometimes. Maybe you don't want to let yourself think about me like that, but I know you do." He says it with utter faith, every moment when he's caught Patrick looking, every bit of meaningful distance and unconscious proximity, and he has all of them catalogued.

"I want to, you want to. You don't have to be in love with me if you don't think you can, but I know you want me, and that's all I...." And he feels kind of broken, enough that when he pushes forwards he thinks he might *cut* Patrick, like his skin is shattered glass.

Pete wants to, needs to do this now, before Patrick ends up with someone else.

He's not-- Patrick's not kissing him or anything, but he's not pushing him away, so Pete kisses him, and he makes it as good as he can, because he's planned this, and he's thinking about everything he's learnt, everything he saw Patrick do, just in the small moments when Patrick had someone, everything he's picked up from Bill Beckett and Danielle and the others.

There's a moment where Patrick's there with him, he feels it, knows it like when they're playing on stage. Patrick's mouth opens and there, he's there, and Pete presses forwards and he can feel him and Pete can have it, everything he's ever wanted or needed, and--

Someone knocks in to them and Patrick pushes him away almost at the same time. He looks flushed and panicked and terrified, the flashing lights making his movements stutter even more than usual.

"Hey, watch it!" Some guy says, pushing Pete back at Patrick. Patrick catches him automatically, hands on Pete's upper arms. He freezes and his hands tighten and Pete leans forwards, not because he thinks Patrick will let him, but because he's not going to miss any chance.

"No," Patrick says, stepping back so Pete's at arms length. "We-- I can't do this, I-- I know your mother, Pete! I can't let you--" he drops Pete's arms and turns around.

Pete takes a deep breath, closes his eyes and forces himself not to follow him. He wants to, wants to argue his case and show Patrick. Convince him. But his hands are sweaty and he's not even close to rational about this, and he needs to be. Pushing Patrick when he's not comfortable is never a good idea.

 

 

It's not the longest Pete's gone without sex other than the solo kind, he knows. It just feels like it. It's the longest he's gone when he wanted it since he first got laid, though, the longest when he wasn't dating someone. That counts for something. He feels louder and obvious and it's okay. It's easier to focus on that, feeling like every bad cliché about teenage hormones, then it is to think about the rest of what he wants.

He waits until everyone's asleep or faking it, then gets out the van, knocking in to Patrick's legs, being that kind of noisy you are when you're trying to be quiet. Patrick doesn't stir more than a rumble so Pete slams the door shut, probably waking up Andy too, but that's okay as long as Patrick gets the point, then he leans against it to jerk off. Bites his lip and says Patrick's name as loud as he can under his breath, bangs his head against the door.

He cleans himself up, damaging the environment a little more by throwing the tissue on the ground, and gets back in to the sound of Patrick's undisturbed sleep, the slight whistle he can't fake because he doesn't know he does it. Patrick's never listened to himself sleep the way Pete does.

"Subtle, Pete," Joe says from the front when he crawls back in, making Pete jump.

Pete gives Joe the finger even though there's no way he can see it and finds his mattress. There's Andy between him and Patrick, but he can close his eyes and listen to Patrick breathing and think about how his dick is still hard, because that's easier than thinking about how he wants to sketch lines of poetry across Patrick's back and spread roses on his bed and make him promise to be Pete's forever. Those thoughts make him feel soft, romantic like something from a teen romance novel, and that's no good.

They're in a gas station in Minnesota and Patrick asks Pete if he thinks Tangy Cheese has more or less nutritional value than lime and chilli flavour, shaking the bags of tortilla chips for emphasis. Smiling at Pete like nothing's changed. Pete values that smile, he does, but he can't stop himself from saying, "So what do you think you'll do to me? Seriously, because I don't get it."

"So that's no on tangy cheese?" Patrick says, looking away.

"Worst thing that could happen, you wouldn't be the first person to break my heart," Pete says. "And you're doing it right now anyway."

Patrick puts the tangy cheese back on the shelf. "Gas station guacamole's probably a bad idea, right?" He's reading the back of the bag, concentrating on it. Pete counts it as a victory. Patrick usually does a better job of tuning Pete out.

"You know I jerk off thinking about you, right?" It's too much, but Pete feels raw, exposed. If they were on stage, Patrick would be making his words sound good, turning them in to music, but Pete just needs to get this out now.

Patrick's hand crunches on the bag, almost popping it open and his shoulders are tense. It's maybe a little wrong, but it's easier doing this when Patrick's got his defences up.

Patrick looks at him, meeting his eyes, and saying, "God, that's your idea of romantic, isn't it?" Words coming out like he can't help it.

Pete grins, making Patrick smile back before he shakes his head and says, "Stop, I'm not encouraging you."

Pete's smile widens and he slings his arm across Patrick's shoulders and it's almost like always, and even Pete dropping his hand down Patrick's back to slide down his side, cop a quick feel, that seems normal too. It leaves Pete giddy, thinking this is what it'll be like when they get together, same only different. It's automatic to dip his head, and it's not even a kiss or a hickey or anything, but Patrick goes tense and pulls away.

Pete's stomach goes cold and he digs his hand in a little, not letting Patrick escape before he forces himself to relax. "Not the place for this sort of thing, huh?" he says, and he knows he's failing at casual, but he thinks that's okay. Not like Patrick can't see through it anyway.

"Not the time either," Patrick says. He checks his watch and says, "I think you're a few years early." Pete can hear the tension in his voice, the forced casualness.

"Or you're just running a few years late." Pete raises his eyebrow like a challenge. "You said you were a late-bloomer."

Patrick opens his mouth to say something, closes it again and Pete doesn't push, doesn't take advantage of it even though he wants to. Instead he just lets his fingers drag down Patrick's forearm, across his wrist and the back of his hand, then steps back before Patrick can pull away.

He grabs another bag of chips and joins Joe at the checkout, fighting the urge to look over his shoulder at Patrick.

 

 

Every day that passes reminds Pete that they're one day closer to getting home, and when they're there, Patrick will be able to run back to his apartment and his other friends and it'll be so much easier for him to avoid Pete. For Patrick to remember that Pete doesn't automatically share his personal space, and Pete can't have that. Pete gets away with as much as he does because Patrick forgets that he shouldn't let Pete in that close, and Pete can't afford to have him remember.

It's the way Patrick is on edge and frustrated, but he keeps forgetting that Pete's at least half the reason why, so Pete can still lean in, curl around him, Patrick automatically making space and relaxing just enough to let Pete be there.

The van breaks down half a mile from their next show and Pete would feel more upset about that if it didn't mean they had to find somewhere to stay -somewhere with beds- while a mechanic, one of Andy's unending supply of useful friends, tried to keep it from exploding.

The mechanic has a house with a garden and everything, and maybe a pull out sofabed isn't the same as the real thing, but fuck, it's a bed that doesn't move, in a room without metal walls and Pete can actually stretch his arms and legs out wide without touching anything except mattress and sheets and oh, he could kiss the guy, seriously, because the sheets are even clean, or cleaner than anything Pete's slept on for the last too-many miles.

Sheets. Bed. The others are still upstairs talking, and Pete should join them, should at least say something to the mechanic -learn his name, maybe- but he's tired and he actually thinks he might be able to sleep, really sleep, and he can't jinx that, so he just closes his eyes and lets himself go.

The feel of the bed dipping wakes him up, the sound of someone very quietly trying to take off their shoes. He opens his eyes and can see Patrick in the leftover light spilling out from the doorway. Patrick's back is hunched over and he's sitting on the edge of the bed, pulling off his shoes and it's familiar, beautiful, the outline of his shoulders, his back, like something carved into Pete's mind forever. He doesn't move, keeps his breathing steady and even.

Patrick gives an end of the day sigh and Pete bites his lip. His eyes are open wide, even if the rest of him is still, and if Patrick looked over, he'd see that Pete was awake and do-- something. Leave, most likely.

He doesn't look over. Patrick just lies back, his eyes closed. Gathering his strength enough to actually get under the covers, maybe, or to finish getting undressed. Patrick's hands go his jeans and he pops the top button and Pete -maybe he makes a sound or stops breathing or something, something to make Patrick's eyes snap open and look at Pete.

Patrick swallows and Pete feels wide awake, like the bone-deep exhaustion of just a few minutes ago never happened. "Pete," Patrick says. "I thought you were asleep." His voice is still rough from the show and almost two months of touring, like even talking quietly is more strain than it should be.

"I was," Pete says. His throat is dry and his skin feels oversensitive, like he can feel every thread in the sheets. Patrick swallows again, his tongue darting out to his lick his lips and Pete rolls on to his side, angling in without meaning to, until Patrick freezes.

"I. I should--"

And Pete doesn't know what he was going to say, doesn't care, because he's not thinking, he's moving, his body rolling over on to Patrick before his mind realises what its doing, and then he's pressing Patrick's hands against the bed and kissing him. He's gripping Patrick's wrists too hard, waiting for him to struggle, to push him away and Pete can't let that happen.

"Let me," he says, and it doesn't come out like a request, more like a demand, so he tries again, "Please, Patrick." And that didn't come out right either, but he's just got to-- Patrick's mouth is there and it opens up and he moans like he can't help it and Pete's name is in there somewhere and fuck, but that does something to Pete.

He crawls down the bed, and it's all fast and he can't give Patrick time to think, time to prepare and think up reasons to say no. He blows Patrick and he jerks himself off -- he's not even thinking about waiting for Patrick to return the favour, not thinking about anything else except this, how much he wants it, the feel of Patrick in his mouth, his skin, his bitten-back groans. Pete comes first, and then he groans around Patrick and that sets Patrick off. He's sitting there, on his knees and he can only think, Patrick.

Patrick looks down at him breathing hard and his eyes are wide and dark and he's still wearing his glasses and Pete thinks, good, he can see me clearly. He knows he looks good, so he licks his lips and then his hand and it's bitter and worth it, for the way Patrick looks at him. Like he's in shock, and not moving away.

And Patrick says, "Pete," like he's not sure of it.

Pete gets to his hands and feet, moves up the bed and kisses him, fast and hard, just for a second before this memory flickers in of watching Patrick and Faye on one of the few times Patrick was late to practise, kissing as slow and lazy as a cat in the sun, so he slows it down.

And he stops, leans his forehead against Patrick, and says, "I have no fucking clue how not to be in love with you. It doesn't-- even when I'm in love with someone else, it doesn't stop. Please, you don't have to-- just let me?" They're so close it's like they're sharing the same breath, too close for Pete to see Patrick's expression and his heart's in his throat, so that's probably a good thing.

"Pete," he says again, and it sounds more solid. He pushes Pete back, but not away. "You're not-- you're seventeen," he says, drawing out the seventeen like it means something.

"I know. It doesn't-- look, you--" Pete pushes himself up on his hands and looks at Patrick. "Even if you don't feel it back, I'm not gonna stop. I'm not going to stop feeling like this, even if you break up with me now, or tomorrow or in sixty years time." He leans his head on Patrick's shoulder, feeling the fabric against his face. "Don't say no. Or you can, but-- it's not going to change anything, not for me."

Patrick kind of sighs, and his hands are on Pete's shoulders, solid, anchoring him. "I don't want to hurt you," he says.

Pete smiles. "Which is a pretty big step up for me in my relationships." Patrick smiles back at him, just a little, and something in Pete just uncurls. "What you are to me isn't going to change," he says, and he's proud of the way that came out, clear, rational.

"You don't think you thinking you're in love with me--"

"Patrick." He stops until Patrick looks at him. "I've been thinking that for years already." He touches the side of Patrick's face, his fingers just under the arm of his glasses. "You don't have to love me back, not like I-- but try? Or at least, don't try not to."

Patrick looks at him and his expression is open, almost hurt, like Pete's said something cruel. "You don't-- you don't have to tell me that," he says, and the last few words are a shouting whisper. "You have no idea what you do to me. You never do."

"I've been in love before," Pete says. "I know what it feels like. I'm not confused or crushing or anything. I'm not new to this." And it's true, but so is it when he says, "I've never felt for anyone else the way I feel for--"

"Stop! I can't--" Patrick's head goes back, pushing in to the mattress like he's trying to get away. He's breathing heavily and Pete kind of hates himself for making Patrick look like that. "I can't do this to you. You're seventeen and I will not be the one to fuck you up."

"You want me," Pete says, because at the moment he knows it like gravity, no doubt.

"One of the things," Patrick says, slowly and not looking at him, "one of the many things that sucks about being older is that you get better at not doing the things you want because you know exactly how much of a bad idea it is."

"This is a great idea," Pete says. "It's up there in the top ten ideas of all time, along with starting this band and having you sing and the internet. I know you love me." He keeps saying that, because it's one of the few things he knows absolutely.

Patrick's head falls forward and he exhales, before looking back up at Pete. His voice is clear, steady when he says, "Maybe I can't take it, when you grow up and realise this was a mistake. When you stop thinking you're in love with me."

It's not a good angle for it, so Pete's punch doesn't have as much force as it should, but he has his knuckles out so it hurts, at least enough to make Patrick groan and go, "Ow! What the fuck, Pete?"

"What the fuck with you! You're fucking turning me down because of something I haven't even done? Did you not listen to one fucking word I said?" Patrick grabs Pete's hand even though Pete wasn't going to punch him again, probably, and the angle of it puts Pete over him, looking down at Patrick and it's not that he's not still angry, but Patrick's there and his expression is open and Pete's maybe gonna break his heart one day, but that means Patrick will let him.

Pete's grinning, he can feel it stretched across his face and it makes Patrick frown like he thinks Pete's laughing at him, but he's not. He just can't help it.

"Get off me," Patrick says.

"No," Pete says, and he twists his wrist around so he's holding on to Patrick's hand instead of Patrick holding his. He's still grinning and he doesn't quite dare to kiss Patrick when he's glaring at Pete like that, but he can duck his head and just rest it against Patrick's, like Patrick can absorb Pete's smile through his skin.

Patrick sighs and it's like going limp in a fight, giving up and giving Pete what he wants, because his free hand is on Pete's shoulder, tracing almost at the healing tattoo. "I'm going to regret this," he says, and he sounds certain.

"You won't," Pete says, promises, and he's still grinning but even more, because Patrick should get everything he wants, and Patrick wants Pete.

Patrick turns his head to the side and his hand is on the side of Pete's face and he's looking Pete in the eye. He's frowning a little like he does when he's concentrating, when he's trying to get something exactly right, the perfect note, the necessary chord. He's biting his lip, just a little and Pete wants to kiss him, but Patrick beats him to it.

 

end.


End file.
